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digital_art_and_the_glitch [2011-10-20 07:43] – fPtNROparzymnAf 50.19.81.82digital_art_and_the_glitch [2011-11-03 09:26] – old revision restored alkan
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-54fRSO  <a href="http://kaobenloeaae.com/">kaobenloeaae</a>+<html> 
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 +<b class="title">topology of error: digital art and the glitch [b+m+n]</b> 
 + 
 +<table border="0" width="95%"> 
 + <tr> 
 + <td colspan="2"> 
 + <p><a href="images.html">[images...]</a> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 +  
 + &quot;Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. You can'
 + solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.&quot; <br> 
 + -- A. Einstein </p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color#578C6B;">Let's avoid an essentially pointless discussion. We can distinguish 
 + digital art from art pursued in another medium by the intrinsic dependence on computers 
 + for its realisation.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">The thing about digital art is that it takes its technology 
 + seriously, it must take its technology seriously, because it is the computer which 
 + realises the signal we are calling art. And the nature of the computer, of technology, 
 + is that it breaks down. Programs run out of memory, systems crash, information is 
 + garbled as it falls before the cursor. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Wandering through a digital-art gallery, the visitors are not surprised seeing _yet 
 + another_ &#206;system-crash' sign pasted on the exhibit, or an 'error 404' at the 
 + end of a hyperlink. Although occuring in many artworks unintentionally, some artists 
 + recognise the glitch as a substantial part of their artwork. We have encountered 
 + two main approaches to the use of glitch in d-art: 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + 1. glitch as d-art aesthetic, an aesthetic that plays with errors and noise in the 
 + presentation of the artwork 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + 2. glitch as a component of the creative process, where the software/hardware/wetware 
 + conflicts play a necessary (even if unexpected part in the generation of the artwork. 
 + The ongoing pursuit of (artistic) development becomes a performance in itself. Here 
 + the glitch is a driving force for a play between the human and the machine, while 
 + the outcome is simply a fleeting target, that can be adjusted and even radically 
 + changed on the fly. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + As computer systems become increasingly complex, resembling more complete worlds 
 + than mere tools, the processes that make them work are far beyond the reach of people 
 + who do not participate in the actual technology development. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">For the average computer user, we know that this thing 
 + called &quot;information&quot;... code, microcode... is what makes computers work, 
 + but we don't know how. It is hidden, incomprehensible; we can't touch it, we don'
 + need to deal with it on a day-to-day level. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The modern computing environment is a seamless landscape of point'n'click, a Pavlovian 
 + field of buttons and bright links. And it has a strict behavioural grammar&#247;we 
 + are all so accustomed to the WIMP interface that we are often unaware of this. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + &quot;Content&quot; must be contained by windows. Point and click, scroll and slide. 
 + You need a trigger-happy mouse finger. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">While her finger happily clicks around, arranging layered 
 + windows, the viewer is drawn into the seductive world of digitised catalogs, where 
 + content remains trapped in the clutches of stereotypical 'click'n'go interaction 
 + design and is iconised to flashy hotspots, screaming next to a Buy button. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">The WIMP interface creates an illusion of objectness.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">The metaphors from the physical world are relentlessly 
 + mapped to the digital: an ocean of electronic books, magazines, tv and radio-stations 
 + is flooding the little that is left of experimental digital interface design.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">We can click there or there, rather like choosing Coke 
 + or Fanta from soft-drink machine.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">When the virtual enters the physical it is mostly through 
 + billboards, as a new addition to global advertising campaigns. It is not seen as 
 + a whole new realm, but as a swarm of virtual blurbs, conceived as small, self contained 
 + units, buzzing around our heads 24/7. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + An example: Yahoo is advertising their new web-site and internet service: Yahoo travel 
 + in San Francisco through a huge billboard that shows the yahoo interface in the american 
 + 50ies style' All blue and pink and glowing neon lights. Saying please, trust us, 
 + don't look any further, drive home and login, we will take you to the &quot;Yahoo 
 + world of Safe Travel&quot;, read through the experiences of others and learn the 
 + world the easy way. A window into virtuality, that will take you back into the isolation 
 + of your home, where the whole world speaks your language.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">And there is an encycloapedic aspect to this. The quest 
 + to progressively reveal a hidden meaning. From Grolier's encycloapedia to the web, 
 + mainstream multimedia is about seamless content retrieval. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + We rarely come in contact with the world behind the screen, the reams of code, the 
 + protocols and puppet strings. The information which creates this landscape for us.<br> 
 +  
 + <pre><p style="color: #575C9B;">0+1.luvl!+ express io n _   
 +include in text  absorb::assimilate</pre> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">The world behind the screen is suffocating under the 
 + burden of the interface. And the interface has nested itself on the surface of the 
 + screen, and appears to be paralysed in that position, not allowing the general user 
 + to discover the layers behind it. The interface must be violated. Scratched and cracked 
 + or pulled out of the screen into the physical space so that its borders become elastic 
 + and transparent, revealing the world behind.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">Historically, &quot;information&quot; is a theoretical 
 + entity... it has its origins in cybernetics, in the idea that the universe of objects 
 + is interpenetrated by ethereal &quot;information patterns&quot; that might be divined 
 + and controlled. It is a fragile entity.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Information is exactly the entity on which the hyped 
 + new-economy is based. Information is a buzz-word used to guarantee the objectivity 
 + of the virtual free-market. However, if its building blocks are so ethereal, this 
 + economy is much more inconsistent, incomplete and fragile than we are lead to believe.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + There is a huge glitch between reality and virtuality. They are two separate entities, 
 + where the digital realm somehow became independent from the world in which it originated. 
 + The two worlds are mapped onto each other, but are not truly interacting. Instead 
 + of making the technology a part of our life, we made our life a part of the technology. 
 + A statistic with which more statistics can be calculated.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Did you know that various corporations are already madly attempting to estimate of 
 + your life-value from the minute that you are born? That they are going to target 
 + their advertisement campaigns directly to you, based on the statistical information 
 + that they carefully collected while you were sound asleep with your bottled water 
 + of brand X next to your bed and a book from an e-bookstore on your chest. And they 
 + will tell you that it is scientifically proven that this new product has been chosen 
 + for you based on objective information. The opposite is true: understanding the chaotic 
 + laws of hypercapitalism means understanding that information is the contrary to absolute, 
 + objective or stable.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">Claude Shannon defined it as a probability function 
 + with no materiality, no dimensions. A pattern. An essence. It can be divorced from 
 + its context, from its body. Ideally, it is infinitely reproducible. Like zeros and 
 + ones in a computer program.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + And this is important: we are speaking about cybernetics because it is more than 
 + a metaphor, more than rhetoric, because it works. Computers are cybernetic systems. 
 + They store, create and retrieve this &quot;theoretical&quot; entity--information.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;"><b>A cybernetic system:</b>  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + &quot;The virtual-as-ideal: &#183; stops short of engaging the underlying matrix 
 + of physics and materiality that makes both mind and cyberspace possible  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + .... limits itself to making isolated conventional forms in conventional space, dressing 
 + them in rhetorical conceit, and leaving the world unchanged.&quot;<br> 
 + M. Novak</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">&quot;Noise&quot; is deviation from the defined parameters 
 + of the signal. It is the corollary of information.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Noise interferes with perfect reproduction, the presumed goal. It interferes with 
 + translation from code to code. Viruses, errors and incompatabilities--these insert 
 + change into fragile patterns, the web page we are trying to download, the program 
 + we are trying to run.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Noise is the enemy of the seamless interface.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Noise or error allows us to reveal the worlds that our 
 + are a part of. It removes the interface and leaves the users helpless.... while they 
 + are listening to the same message for the 50th time: All our help-desk collaborators 
 + are busy. Please hold the line.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + &quot;All that is not information, not redundancy, not form and not restraints is 
 + noise, the only possible source of new patterns.&quot;   
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + -- Bateson, Mind and Nature - A Necessary Unity, 1979</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">Noise draws us to the surface of the computing environment, 
 + to reflect on how the tool system is shaping us, on how arbitrary its behavioural 
 + and procedural grammar is.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + I'm here to talk about artists who work with noise and error, the corollary of information.<br> 
 + &#160; 
 + </td> 
 + </tr> 
 + <tr> 
 + <td width="474"> 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">While Belinda talks about the aesthetics of the glitch, I'm 
 + here to talk about the glitch as a process: where the participants do not represent, 
 + but perform, infect each other&#226;s worlds with alien loopholes, (mis)interpretations, 
 + and errors. Using glitches, interaction becomes more insipred drifting within inter-reality 
 + membranes and less a predefined menu browsing of digitized shop-windows. The glitch 
 + as last resort without a shopping mall attached to it. A forest of live wires.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">They play with the puppet strings.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + This is what we mean by &quot;the glitch&quot;. The glitch draws our attention to 
 + the fragility of information as a cybernetic entity.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The glitch interferes with perfect reproduction. It interferes with the goal of a 
 + seamless, stable system by playing with the concept of information, code, microcode 
 + and pattern itself.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">The space in between the interfaces is not a concern. 
 + And it is exactly in this space where d-art can function as a subversion of the polished 
 + make-believe future of the information era.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">Noise undermines the illusion of objectness created 
 + by the point'n'click interface.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + You will notice in some of the examples we give you that the code usually hidden 
 + from the computer user seems to wriggle its way to the surface of the screen, that 
 + the behavioural protocols encountered in mainstream multimedia either don't work 
 + or don't apply. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Their navigational systems often mimic and parody the modes of sorting and accessing 
 + information on the web. They are an attack on the assumed functionality, interactivity 
 + and &quot;user-friendly&quot; interface of the web. Code stripped of functionality, 
 + code drawn from the innards of computer hardware and set loose across the surface 
 + of the screen, code as an end in itself. Miles from the glossy, java-enabled, flash-heavy 
 + &quot;interactivity&quot; of the web.<br></p> 
 + &#160;</td> 
 + <td><p style="color: #575C9B;"> 
 + The word interaction has been reduced to pointing, clicking, 
 + scrolling and dragging of cute moving objects on the screen. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Let me give you a couple of definitions of the word interaction:  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + 1. Mutual or reciprocal action or influence; as, the interaction of the heart and 
 + lungs on each other.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + 2. Transfer of energy between elementary particles or between an elementary particle 
 + and a field or between fields  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Does any of this happen when interacting with web-pages? There is a lot of theory 
 + around what happens when a person hits a link, but essentially, the only truly interactive, 
 + mutual influence here is that your pockets are being emptied and their filled. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + And this has to happen as seamlessly as possible, so that your credit card number 
 + floats weightlessly to their database. I had the most revealing experience trying 
 + to purchase software from MASCHIN3NKUNST. The site was messing with me until I got 
 + to the purchase form, where I truly did hesitate a second before I entered my credit 
 + card number. Only because the interface was playing with web-protocols and error 
 + messages. Only because they showed me explicitly how fragile the system actually 
 + is.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">Information, by nature, is open to corruption. We know 
 + this as computer users.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">A few common computer user exclamations:<br> 
 + 'Did you see what just happened? I lost everything!!!'<br> 
 + 'Oh..... no.... it's there again!'<br> 
 + 'But..... I didn't do anything.........'<br> 
 + 'It just rearranged my boxes!'<br> 
 + 'I'm sure I saved it correctly and look at it now, it's all gibberish!'<br> 
 + 'No backup!!!!!'</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">A single keystroke can render a message unreadable--if 
 + at any time we change the parameters of the &quot;signal&quot; in cybernetics, we 
 + automatically render the remainder &quot;noise&quot;.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Information lapses in and out of comprehensibility. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + This is what I mean by the &quot;fragile&quot; nature of information patterns, usually 
 + hidden from us.</p></td> 
 + </tr> 
 + <tr> 
 + <td width="474"> 
 +  
 + <p><p style="color: #575C9B;">There is a limit to the glitch aesthetics. It often becomes 
 + an end in itself, where the user still cannot engage in a generative proces with 
 + the machine. The glitch should be viewedas something anchored in the same system 
 + as information, and as information is 9as said earlier) the building block of our 
 + society, the glitch is an essential part of our world as well, not simply an adjunct 
 + to an aesthetic movement. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The GUI interface is set on top of the machinic universe in order to make the user 
 + more efficient and comfortable. The multidimensional topologies that could emerge 
 + from the collaboration between the human and the machine have been prematurely bound 
 + to the cartesian system of x-y (and unconvincingly to z) coordinates and binary responses. 
 + In today's CHI world, it's all about control. Not interaction or responsivity but 
 + linear control. Control that does not account for noise in its predetermined course 
 + of action. The noise is the complaint of a spoiled, irresponsible child.<br> 
 + </p> 
 + <pre><p style="color: #575C9B;">&gt;Please don't let integer or whatever his/her name is back on the list. 
 + 
 + noted.  ultra sanitary mammalian pollination system. 
 + 
 + &gt;I'm on several list  
 + &gt;where this person's  
 + &gt;digital noise streams through 
 + &gt;on a daily basis. 
 + 
 + &quot;All that is not information, not redundancy, not form and not 
 +restraints is noise, the only possible source of new patterns.&quot; (Bateson, 1979) 
 +1979 when i was 1 + making 01 ultra noise. </pre> 
 + </td> 
 + <td><p style="color: #578C6B;">Particularly in sites like ; :,:; ,.; and ;:,:.;:; , reams 
 + of unparsable and corrupt code seem to lampoon the transmission of web-based sound, 
 + text and graphics.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Hyperlinks lead nowhere, a keystroke activates a hidden script which renders the 
 + entire page gobbledigook.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + If you've ever tried to work your way through ;:;:;.:,.,:,: with a trigger-happy 
 + mouse finger and a desire to extract meaning, you'll understand what I mean.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Errors can have meaning. They are our portals to the 
 + machinic universe in which we spend most of our days. However, the machine is usually 
 + silent, or better said, muted by the interventions of software and multimedia designers.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">A discussion of digital art would be remiss without 
 + mentioning, and beginning, with ;: : :, :: ;.  
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + ;:; :; : was started in ;:,:,::;:;.,,: in the early 90's. Amongst other things, it 
 + is famous for mercilessly crashing browsers around the world. It is also famous for 
 + turning the familiar web interface inside-out. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + It deploys the hidden codes and glyphs of Internet protocol as central aesthetic 
 + components, a protocol which despite the liberatory rhetoric that surrounds it is 
 + put to work in the world enabling largely banal content.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;</td> 
 + </tr> 
 + <tr> 
 + <td colspan="2"><p style="color: #575C9B;">What we need to build is not yet another gate to the 'age of 
 + access', but a media de-tox chamber, where we can sweat out the unnecessary icons, 
 + protocols and constraining interaction methods..... and above all, where we can wash 
 + away the content that has polluted both physical and virtual reality before they 
 + had a chance to evolve and grow closely together.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">jodi &gt;&gt; leitmotiv string, &quot;we serve no content&quot;, 
 + rests uncomfortably in the encyclopaedic world of the web. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + There is no central meaning, no content to be progressively unveiled. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Just lots of peripheral visions.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">It is on the periphery of understanding and intuition 
 + where we can expect unpredictable interaction to happen. When we move away from the 
 + well known paths. Where we don't know what to expect.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">It lives on the other side of the web, the side filled 
 + with incompatibilities and error messages, machines speaking to machines in a language 
 + we don't speak.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Error during translation: (-3030) Translation path does 
 + not exist</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">In this space physical metaphors of superhighways, windows, 
 + desktops and elevators does not exist.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Error during translation: (-3030) Translation path does 
 + not exist</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">A far cry from flash, proprietary browsing. It comprises 
 + page after page of apparently incomprehensible code.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">When the standardised interface has been stripped away, 
 + and the machine spits out all the complaints, that's when we start to interact, trying 
 + to comprehend both the machine proceses and the brain-waves of its creators. Here 
 + our worlds truly meet, and we engage in clumsy negotiations, trying to translate 
 + each-other's worlds into each-other's languages. Translation becomes a living system, 
 + through which the two realities warp into a hybrid tangled one.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">The &quot;index&quot; to 7061, for instance, scatters 
 + a grid of luminous green lines and fragments of machine code across the page. Memories 
 + of Commodore 64 meltdown. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + As with all ;:::,:; sites, the index is particularly random, and plays on the user'
 + feeling of being lost in hyperspace after all, most of the time spent on the web 
 + is useless shuffling.</p></td> 
 + </tr> 
 + <tr> 
 + <td colspan="2"> 
 + <p><p style="color: #575C9B;">Instead of shuffling, we need to start drifting, making 
 + meaning of the unknown world by allowing it to influence our progression. The roads 
 + are not built for us, we make them up and draw their maps as we go along. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The computer is not a representation machine. It is a performance machine, engaged 
 + in shaping of itself through a generative process..... and most of its generation 
 + depends on our parameters and variables.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">The visitor has difficulty working out if the broken 
 + hyperlinks, script-generated gibberish and hung system messages belong to her or 
 + to the site. Actually, they belong to the technology.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">The technology alone does not engage with our world. 
 + We ask questions, the technology answers, but it answers with something which we 
 + fed into it.... and we fed into it a rigid, mapped and marked structure of reality, 
 + one which does not respond to the living world. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Error during translation: (-3030) Translation path does not exist</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">The glitch is dangerously political, anarchic.<br> 
 + It draws attention to the constructed nature of information, usually hidden from 
 + us. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + useless shuffling</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">The most obvious recent example of the glitch between 
 + physical and informational reality was the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, 
 + where the obsolete maps served as a tactical excuse in a heavily technologically 
 + monitored zone. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + topographical amnesia 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + We are told that Nato's 'accidental bombing' of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was 
 + due to the mission's use of maps made years ago: the embassy shouldn't have been 
 + there.<br> 
 +  
 + Topographical data previously collected from the site became digitally partitioned 
 + from the altering physical field and in an ironic return redescribed itself back 
 + onto the original surface with the conviction of ammunition.<br> 
 + Present culture confesses the relative, inherently representative condition of the 
 + photo-graphic image, yet it's authority is uncontested within the self determination 
 + of the military/scientific complex. The infinite transportability of the photograph 
 + suggests that it need not have any responsibility to its field for military and market 
 + agendas. This forgetful office between an object and its representation cannot be 
 + as succesfully exploited by the recorded sound, which, in order to be experienced, 
 + must re-manifest in/as a continuum of material events fundamentally vunerable to 
 + acoustic and mnemonic contingencies. This innate re-modelling of the recorded subject 
 + in playback threatens any investment in an aural substitution of objecthood. Anyway, 
 + we have made sound busy with its own substitution - music stands in for the rememebring 
 + of sound. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + -- delire 18.5.99 </p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">It inserts an element of play into the corporate genome, 
 + like a virus. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + It brings us back to the surface, to an awareness of the tools which are progressively 
 + colonising us.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Maybe this sentence would sound more realistic if we 
 + would say: to an awareness of the market whose tools are progressively colonising 
 + us. The machine is _not_ a colonial being. Humans are. Especially humans striving 
 + for power. Money. Speed. Even culture is not a safe haven any more. Reduced to bits, 
 + interchangeable and reproducible, a lot of digital art and culture is just a pretty 
 + name for a new commodity: cultural capital.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">I'm not going to say that all digital art is about noise, 
 + viruses, error, the glitch, because it's not. But the projects which have inspired 
 + me, from which I have composed my own personal 'history of error', most certainly 
 + are. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The next piece I want to talk about is MindVirus, an electronic magazine from Adelaide, 
 + Australia. It was created by a group of artists called ;.;..:;;: , and the first 
 + edition came out in 1994. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The CD-ROM was distributed in plastic agar-jelly dishes with &quot;infectious substance&quot; 
 + stickers on the top. I don't think any of us ever really knew what they were on about. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + MindVirus involves navigational skills and sensory apparatus that have been written 
 + out as incidental in mainstream multimedia. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Sound, pattern-recognition, proprioception and an element of randomness become central 
 + to the navigational experience. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + In MindVirus ;:,.;:;:, after I'd spent a couple of hours watching fish swim backwards 
 + across the screen, I was given the option of pressing &quot;restart&quot; for fear 
 + of strange interfaces and alternative paradigms.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">The mainstream of digital design still thinks of intraction 
 + in terms of presentation. However, strange and unexpected interfaces can draw the 
 + participant into the generative process of the work (the constructuion of the now). 
 + The one interface that many people don't know how to operate any more is their own 
 + body. When the coming into existence of a responsive reality depends on being conscious 
 + of their bodies, movements and physical social interaction, some people freeze. And 
 + when they freeze, so does the time and space of the responsive environment. The synthesis 
 + is interrupted.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">The only problem was that the familiar &quot;restart&quot; 
 + button began to blink and skid across the screen in a most user-unfriendly fashion, 
 + with my cursor in hot pursuit. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + In MindVirus 3.7, the reader is presented with a pair of monekys involved in an inexplicable 
 + cue-card experiment as they try to access &quot;meaningful&quot; information. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Habitual point'n'click action doesn't seem to yield results. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The monkeys, it seems, are conducting a psychological experiment on the faceless 
 + &quot;user&quot;--are you actually interacting with this machine or just responding 
 + to coloured links? 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Another electronic magazine from the mid-nineties is called I/O/D, 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Some of you may remember this. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + In I/O/D2, the opening screen is black, 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + its field of links and hotspots dead to the eye. On touching the mouse, the user 
 + finds that she affects the sound emanating from the speakers. Slight movements introduce 
 + new bass loops and interstellar bleeps. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + After a while, she discerns that the key navigational organ is the ear-- 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + she must re-adjust herself to a sound-based interface.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Some people have a problem with searching for the interface, 
 + if it is buried under the surface of the screen, or when it bleeds off its edges. 
 + Especially with sound-based interfaces, that do not allow distracted clicking, an 
 + engaged involvement is demanded. Sound moves in and out of existence, and does not 
 + tolerate slack. Movement through sound is much more continuous then movement through 
 + a visual interface. The total user control is impossible, as different timelines 
 + intersect. The interaction becomes more a free play in time and less a rule baseg 
 + game in space.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">The initial reaction is one of bewilderment: am I controlling 
 + these noises or are they pre-programmed? In fact, they are built on the fly by the 
 + user's movements. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Is it broken, or is it meant to sound like that? 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + That's the reaction Keith Netto, a Melbourne-based artist, also gets to his a-life 
 + program, Sonicform. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Sonicform came out in 1998, its stated mission to create a java-based sound environment 
 + for the web which capitalises on the nature of networked information--its capacity 
 + to infect and be infected by other information. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + In each individual version of the Sonicform system, there are basic 'sound fragments' 
 + attached to images in the top left-hand corner of the screen at startup. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + These sounds are then combined by users into a time-based system known as a 'transform'
 + This is a string of serial code, like a genome, which instructs certain sounds to 
 + evolve, switch on and off or remain inactive over a given time. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Each instance of Sonicform is linked via the net to 'sonicserver' and consequently 
 + all other versions of itself which are being executed at any point in time. It implements 
 + a threshold-triggered feedback loop to graft each set of instructions back into the 
 + main sound stream as it evolves.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">Talking about mutual influence between humans and information 
 + systems leads us naturally towards a long discussion about a-life, expanding hybrid 
 + universes, flesh machines etc. However, we have decided to concentrate on the catalyst 
 + of these processes and will not dive into the processes themselves in this presentation. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + Our goal is to scratch a milimeter beneath the surface of the point'n'click universe 
 + and draw your attention to the existence of another possible approach to coding errors, 
 + bugs, noise and other glitches....</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">What we have been calling the &quot;glitch&quot; is 
 + usually the enemy. It is the enemy of a stable system, of a seamless user-interface, 
 + of the point'n'click universe. 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + The glitch also draws our attention to the arbitrary and constructed nature of information 
 + itself.</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #575C9B;">We would like to end this presentation with Belinds'
 + closing question, and hope that its ambiguity will open up a whole new set of approaches 
 + to this topic:</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + <p style="color: #578C6B;">What happens to life in our embodied actual when the 
 + object of our investigations becomes the virtual replicator?</p> 
 + <br>&#160;<br> 
 + 
 + __________________________________<br> 
 + </p> 
 + <pre><p style="color: #575C9B;">noise        _ thermal stimulation of taste 
 +patent       _ art.4rm 
 +xx           _ luvl! 
 +xy           _ kostly - speeding thieves on the international genostrada 
 + 
 +=cw4t7abs    _ the future 
 += life form [gene konglomerat] the only possible source of new patterns. 
 + 
 + 01 virtual architecture assemblage of crumple-free materie 
 + the chaotic tremor of finite resolution towards the progress of 
 + 01 trajectory as noise constantly resetting the trajectory is 
 +</pre></p> 
 + </td> 
 + </tr> 
 +</table> 
 +</html> 
  • digital_art_and_the_glitch.txt
  • Last modified: 2011-11-03 09:28
  • by alkan