~ CONCEPT STATEMENT ~
When I began my process, I knew I wanted to create something to do with the human body and glitch. I thought this would be a more interesting approach than going by the usual digital glitch. I began to brainstorm how I could bring the human aspect into glitch and while discussing it with family I came to the idea of irregular heartbeats. They act as a sort of glitch within the body so I began to research further. I came to understand that there are a bunch of different arrhythmias that can occur, this sparked the idea that I could work with the sounds of different heart beats to create something interesting. Once I did this, I realised that although it was interesting the soundscape didn’t really work too well with the concept of glitch. I began to think about how I could present the concept more creatively.
When trying to save my sound scape I found the ‘burn to disk’ option and this gave me an idea. I thought “what if I could burn a sound to a disk and then make it glitch?”, although then this would be going back to the idea of a digital glitch. I thought about it further and it hit me. I would burn the sound of a regular heart beat onto a disk and then alter that sound to make a glitch. I liked this idea but I wasn’t sure what I could do to the disk that wasn’t too cliché. I went back to my research and re-discovered the visual images of what an irregular heart beat looks like. Looking again at these images gave me the idea to scratch them onto the cds (because obviously I knew that scratches on cds made them skip/not work). I couldn’t decide whether I should etch the beats in a circular motion around the cd or whether I should do them in horizontal lines across the cds, in the end I did both for experiments sake. The reason I chose to etch an irregular heart beat sort of diagram onto the regular heart beat sound cd is that then it would be a combination of both a technical glitch as I assumed the cd wouldn’t work, but it would also work with my concept due to the fact that the irregular heartbeat is affecting the regular heartbeat even though they are taking a different form (regular as sound and irregular as etching).
Once both cds were etched into, I put the one with the circular design into my cd player. It tried to read it but then came up with nothing. I was sort of disappointed with this result as I had hoped for the cd to still read and then hear some sort of sound. Yes, I did say already that I knew it wouldn’t work properly, but I still wanted a result that was a little more dramatic. I tried the same cd again just in case but had the same result. I did the same with the other cd and again no sound. However, the last time I tried to play the cd I realised that there was a sound coming through. This sound was not from the soundtrack on the cd but instead was coming from the cd player itself as it tried to read the cd. I recorded the sound in hopes that I could do something with it. Liking the idea of using this sound more and more I began to really think about whether this worked with my concept or not and…OF COURSE IT DID! I believe it works so well! This is because it was a semi-natural occurring glitch, granted I did etch onto the cd but then I expected it to still be able to read and play sound (which it did not) thus I created a “glitch within a glitch”. It took me some time to fully wrap my own head around what I was doing and what the concept was but eventually I came to a conclusion.
Ultimately my work is about the human body and glitch, not just a glitch within the human body but digital glitches too. I want to present the cds as something tangible because an irregular heart beat is not tangible, and I want to play the sound of the cd attempting to read the etched disk because I want the class to listen to what a glitch sounds like rather than view it. I believe my work demonstrates the most important aspects of glitch: you cannot control it, and it is more than digital.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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