2013 curated (ᴳ̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇​̇litch) art genealogies catalogue

Curated by Daniel Franke, John McKiernan and Rosa Menkman Text and design: Rosa Menkman

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by Bill With works by: Nick Briz, jonCates, Kevin Carey, Anton Marini filter inspired Miller, Bill A Morton, Phil Myers, Alex n, Kegeya Nick Jodi, Etra, Emilio Gomariz, Ratté, Sabrina n, Peterso Bryan Oliver, Julian , noteNdo ier, Brenna Murphy, no_carr jon.satrom, Rick Silva, miYö Van Stenis and Yoshi Sodeoka

a «Over the last 10 years, glitch, a perceived break from a flow in matter subject r technological system, has become a more and more popula s in the (new) media arts. Today, Glitch Art is indeed so popular that theorist often feel the need to categorize and historicize the genre. Dada, Futurism and de Stijl are just a couple of historical Avant-Garde movements that have been used to delineate ‘the history’ of Glitch Art. But this teleological principle defies and confines glitch’ procedural and fragmented nature. a The exhibition (ᴳl̇ ̇ itch) Art Genealogies does not focus on glitch art from all an give to historically singular point of view, nor does it attempt ̇ encompassing historical or causal overview. Instead, (ᴳ̐l̇ itch) Art Genealogies d, recognizes the complexities and processes of glitch arts’ many affiliate on light a shine to tries it interconnected and (geo-)fragmented discourses: why particular glitches develop social-political momentum in a specific point in time and how this momentum changes over time. ̐ Art Genealogies is an effort to show just five of the many threaded (ᴳlitch) of glitch discourses that play a role in the curators subjective understanding t glitch art at this present. In these threads, generations of differen tual concep s, method working their communities of (visual) glitch artists and themes and politics are (inter)connected and/or juxtaposed.» _____________

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After publishing A personal history on my usage of the term 'glitch art', back in August 2012, Caleb Kelly (author of the 2009 book Cracked Media, MIT) wrote to me: "I think there is a lot missing here. We were using the term glitch art back in the 1990s - it was common, even in university courses at the time." While I agree with Caleb that there is a lot missing in my blogpost, I stress that I did not intend and do not believe in such a thing as (a complete) history of glitch and glitch art (but I am sure Caleb doesn't either).

At the time of writing my personal history-post, I had been observing certain glitch art works, practices, techniques, politics and communities and felt inclined to draw historical lineages between them, as some sort of archeology. This forced me to reflect on the problems involved in writing any kind of history on the many little pockets of glitch. Some answers to these questions came to me when I read a text on genealogy by Foucault, that lead me to re-engage the problems involved with the history of glitch, but this this time from a genealogical perspective. In retrospect, I think my initial blogpost from 2012 would actually be better understood as genealogy and not a archeology, as are previous posts such as disfiguration (2008) datamoshing (2009) and the emergence of glitch filters (2009).

“Genealogy does not resemble the evolution [...] and does not map the density of a people. On the contrary, to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations, or conversely, the complex reversals—the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those which continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being lies not at the root of what we know and what we are but the exteriority of accidents”** _____________________ ** (Foucault, Michel. "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History." in: the Foucault Reader , ed. P. Rabinow(Harmondsworth: Penguin) 1984. p.81)

According to Foucault, a genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore what he calls an "unbroken continuity, that operates beyond the dispersion of forgotten things". Instead, genealogy is a specific type of history that deconstructs that what was once unified; it makes a continuity of discontinuities. Genealogy does not subscribe to the concept of 'one line of origin' and thus doesn’t set out to trace any origins. Instead, it researches the descents and emergences of how systems of affiliation come in to play and map the understandings and meanings of the object accordingly.

So while history often refers to the study of lines of descent and origin, the development of families and the tracing of their lineages, (Glitch) Art does not follow any traditional lines of descent. If at all, the ‘historical continuity’ of glitch is one of breaks, voids, bends, forks, in-betweens, instabilities, ossification, abandonment and turns. In fact, there is no such thing as a ‘glitch art continuum’ or a ‘first work’ (or form) of glitch art. Rather than ‘the history of glitch’, there are many, parallel, interconnected non-linear, fragmented and overlapping discourses which impact each other in many directions. Thus, glitch art, being in itself a studies of disruptive flows and change, resulting from (perceived) accidents, is best described following a genealogical model.

To write a genealogy of glitch art means to write the stories of emergence of a practice that does not necessarily depend on facts. Instead, it reveals the preexisting battles present at the moment of arising: different strands of glitch art are constructed from ambiguous, pre-existing discourses. (ᴳlitch) Art Genealogies presents some of these stories told from uncertain interpretations, that are neither true nor false. These glitches are constantly subject to revision: while their language systems emerge, their meanings shift, idioms ossify ... and then they change again.

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NES-Aesthetics

NES circuitbending esthetic# Circuitbending is the customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as children's toys, to create new musical or visual instruments generating output beyond their original capabilities. It invol ves a certain threshold of knowledge and expertise - ie. a basic understan ding of electronics and its tools.

Lately programmers have apprehended opportunit ies in emulating, rather than manually repeating the physical process of circu itbending. In 2009 for instance, no_carrier (Don Miller) released glitchNES, a softw are that emulates parts of the technological process of circuitbending an NES cons ole.

noteNdo, (2007) The Punch-Out! Variations

no_carrier, (2009) glitchNES

NES circuitbending esthetic

The concept that a glitch can be designed or distributed through a standardized glitch software, seems at first mayb e a-typical, but has in fact become a more and more common tendency and even important tradition in recent glitch art. More and more ‘new’ glitch art is being modeled after original glitches within older media, perpetuating a shift from destabilizing breaks within tech nolo gy or infor mati on-b ased proc esse s towa rds the gene ric and associative display of more and less ‘retro’ effects.

With the help of these standardized, commodifie d and institutionalized effects, any user can handle a broad range of data types and technologies in predetermined, often retro-nostalgic ways. They form what can best be described as an approximation of what origin ally would have been the materialization of a destabilizing break of mach ine technology. Besides that, and perhaps more importantly, these forms of glitch constitute a growing vocabulary of media materialities in which differ ent breaks gain meaning beyond their original technological /root. _____________________ Other examples to be considered: Cementimental, (2001) NES Circuitbending Johnny Rogers, (2005) NES Glitch Compilation excer pt (Legend of Zelda) Dan Winckler and Anton Marini, (2009) OPEN EMU Kim Asendorf, (2011) Extrafile (also on display)

Enigmatic Realities

Julian Oliver, (2001) Max Miptex

Rick Silva, (2013) RANDOM SEED

Alex Myers, (2012) YPTOLM

Kevin Carey, (2013) Psych and Seek

Enigmatic Realities#

GUI Politics and Prose

GUI Politics and Prose#

JODI, (2009) OS Desktop from the My%Desktop, (2002-2010) series

miYรถ van Stenis (2012) Post_it_desktop_Feedback

jon.satrom, (2012) Plugin Beachball Success

Emilio Gomariz (2012) spectrumcube

GUI Politics and Prose# The collection Graphic User Interface (GUI) Politics and Prose shows glitch works that expand and explore the meaning and materiality of the GUI. Traditionally, the GUI functions to enhance the efficiency and ease of use of a computer program - in short: to enlarge 'usability'. But in these videos the GUI is exploited to enact a battle at the boarders of system and entropy, standardization and corruption, expression and code, and meaning and non-meaning, thwarting the viewers’ expectations and conventions of the ‘usability’ of a GUI.

Sabrina Ratte (2012) AURAE

Yoshi sodeoka (2012) Youth In Trouble The Presets

Psychedelia and New Psychedelia

JODIs early work My%Desktop (2002-2010) for instance, is best understood as a rejection of what can be referred to as GUI based ‘determinism’. At first sight, this series shows a collection of OS_systems going haywire, ruined and void of meaning.

But the GUIs formal fragmentation or what seems to be a remarkably well choreographed spasming, forces the spectator to consider the work more closely. It seems like there is actually something more than just GUI-chaos on display. After reflecting upon the work for a while, it becomes clear that JODI is actually performing the GUI. The conventions I am conditioned to approach a GUI with, are left behind and instead the GUI has been deconstructed into a performance tool and maybe even something close to a writerly software.

Works such as My%Desktop actively contribute to the emergence of a discourse in which GUI inherent elements such as icons, sounds and screen-flow acquire alternative usage and meaning beyond their real-life metaphors. Over the past decade, artists such as miYö van Stenis and Emilio Gomariz have adopted and expanded this vernacular of performative GUI, towards the realm of playful esthetization. But the expanded GUI vernacular has also been used in critical media art such as jon.satroms’ Plugin Beachball Success. In this work Satrom employs the GUI to engage larger issues outside of the GUIs own materiality, such as upgrade and convergence culture. Satrom shows that what was read as a usability glitch a decade ago, has now become an established critical media esthetics vernacular.

Psychedelia and New Psychedelia

Psychedelia and New Psychedelia#

Psychedelia and New Psychedelia is a collection of videos inspired by the similarly named exhibition “the New Psychedelia” that took place in 2011 at the Mu in Eindhoven (curated by Francesca Gavin).

“This new wave of psychedelia differs from the 1960s focus on perceptual distortion and cultural upheaval. But cosmic cinema, fantastical imagery and dream machines have transformed into YouTube videos, gif culture and sculptural works that play with modern altered states. [...]”** Psychedelic arts’ original esthetics such as hallucinatory patterns, recursion, fractals and bright colors are illustrative to glitch, not necessarily because glitch artists have similar convictions or esthetic vision as 1960s psychedelic artists, but rather because of glitch arts’ algorithmic nature which was often referenced in 1960s psychedelic art. However, some glitch works seem to draw direct lines of inspiration or even knowledge (in the case of Anton Marini through collaboration) from these early times of counterculture. What does it mean to re-fabricate a genre 50 years after its coming about? And what is this ‘new’ in new psychedelia?

A Bill Miller (2012) gridSol_altar2

Anton Marini vs Rutt Etra (2013) Sect 7 N-E

Brenna Murphy (2012) skymappr

Authorship // Openness Primarily active during the 70s as both activist and video artist based in and around Chicago, Phil Morton (1945 - 2003) wrote "Distribution Religion", a manifesto based on a conviction best understood as what today is known as ‘copy it left’ (but which Morton dubbed COPY <IT> RIGHT). Distribution Religion included the first DIT ‘open sourced’ schematics for an image processor, made by Dan Sandin. Mortons legacy also includes the film and video department of the the School of the Arts Institute Chicago, which Morton instigated and which is believed to be one of the earliest institutionalized film and video departments in the world.

Mortons convictions still resonate in current video art practices of (SAIC/Chicago based) artists such as jonCates, who initiated the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive in 2007, and Nick Briz whose Apple Computers (2013) is a [re]mix of Phil Morton's 1976 video tape 'General Motors'. In these (dirty) new media manifestos, Briz and Cates perform their take on issues of ‘Hystories’, planned obsolescence, upgrade culture, technological self-reliance, control and copying.

Phil morton, (1970) General Motors

jonCates, (2011) ᶀƦ⟲Ⱪ3ᥒ ⟒Ɍ3!!!⟳ⱤĐƵ (AKA: Broken Records: Hystories i Of Noise && Dirty New Media)

Nick Briz, (2013) Apple Computers

Authorship // Openness#

Enigmatic Realities# A video card barfs misunderstood RAM, all clipping modes are off, navigation causes environments to warp into all kinds of impossible angles while traces of passed imagery seem to get stuck in the sky and color modes have chosen to celebrate the 60s psychedelia once again. In these six game engine based ‘realities’, the rules of the frameworks that the player normally uses to make sense and navigate their videogames with, are intentionally ruined.

But in these works, ruining means something more than just destroying. ‘Ruining’ is a conceptual orientation and a technique that underlines the constructedness of a videogame-environment, forcing the viewer to consider the videogame engine no longer as just a platform for gaming, but instead as a technology that normally functions within a social reality, which it generally intends to resemble, to create ‘immersion’.

Nick Kegeyan, (2013) LVLS

Bryan Peterson, (2012) nowhere?

Enigmatic Realities

The fact that the game environments still ‘function’, while programmed to ‘glitch’, makes them critically challenging. The gaming platform is in fact redefined to not follow its genre, form or technique and force the user to reflect upon her conventional frames of reference for the particular platform. Finally it becomes clear that software is more than just a preprogrammed tool: it is a materialization of social modalities, that can endlessly be re-modified into different interpretive or social conclusions.

Though the genre of videogame based glitch art is not new at all, the development of the cross-platform game engine Unity in 2005 has definitely made a big impact on developments within a video game _glitch art_ discourse. Video game engines such as Unity are now taught in schools such as SAIC, which is where Nick Kegeyan, Kevin Carey and Bryan Peterson are students.