Term Project Update: Thinking & Reading
I think I jumped the gun a little too early in making the spreads last week, but, it allowed me to realize that I have a lot more work to do when it comes to figuring out the scope of this project.
In an effort to not overthink this book but also think enough about it so I can explain the topic to someone, I did some more reading! Thanks Reg for all the great links on Glitch Art :)
I hadn’t realized the sort of profound themes and ideas behind glitch art until I did read some articles and watch a few videos. I imagined it and understood it purely as a sort of aesthetic image, but I did see that there could be connections created between the artists and their ideas about technology.
One artist I found that I fell in love with is David Szaudr. He has a portrait series called “Failed Memories.”
“Failed Memories in which he affects the faces in photo portraits, through intentional manipulation of individual pixels and corrupted algorithms that disassemble the portraits over a length of time. This strategic erosion of photo portraits comments on the passing of time as it affects our understanding of memories and attempts to visualize the memory process as images that were once clear in our minds inevitably disintegrate.”
Quote from Mallika Roy from http://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-glitch-it-good/
Is this not the most stunning thing ever? I especially love it because the glitching is centralized on her face and no where else.
To understand more of the artists’ intention beyond the image, I read up on the history and looked at the manifesto. Here are some quotes that stood out to me:
“Trying to find the soul in the machine.” (00:13)
“Something is exposed that maybe you weren’t quite ready for it to be exposed.” (00:18)
“Gateways to the understanding the cultural values associated with our technology.” (00:35)
“Glitch art is a reaction to the hyper-realism that is portrayed in contemporary media.” (1:10)
“We don’t have to accept what has been handed to us.” (1:29)
Controlling what you are doing but also relinquishing control.
Glitch it Good: Understanding the Glitch Art Movement
“Glitch art starts conversations that traditional art forms can’t really access, just by the nature of how it's created. How much do we control our technology, and how much does it control us? Can technology ever transcend the imperfection inherent in its human creators? What does it mean if we can reclaim the “errors” in our computers, phones, and cameras and repurpose them as our tools?”
There are themes inherent in this medium, then: morbidity and destruction next to growth and regeneration, conflicts between control and unpredictability, disassembling and re-appropriating the systems that surround us, technological chaos versus human balance — or vice versa.”
"Destruction versus revitalization, human processes versus those determined for us, systemic failings versus make-shift solutions...”
“The final aesthetic of a piece of glitch art is not the only thing that matters. In glitch art, the process of the creation of the artwork means as much as the final product, and determines what can be considered true glitch art versus art that looks glitchy.”
“One narrative that a handful of artists have explored through glitch art is the corruption of memory in an age of technology.”
“The glitch is a wonderful experience of an interruption that shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse.”
“Glitch art is often about relaying the membrane of the normal, to create a new protocol after shattering an earlier one. The perfect glitch shows how destruction can change into the creation of something original.”
“The glitch does not only invoke the death of the author, but also the death of the apparatus, medium or tool (at least from the perspective of the technological determinist spectator) and is often used as an anti software-deterministic’ form.”
“Glitch studies attempts to balance nonsense and knowledge. It searches for the unfamiliar while at the same time it tries to de-familiarize the familiar.”
After some reading & more thinking, this is what I am thinking in terms of the scope of the project:
This book can be my reaction to “the hyper-realism that is portrayed” throughout history. Fragmented sculptures, in some way, have been destroyed. As mentioned above, there are themes inherent in glitch art. This includes: “morbidity and destruction next to growth and regeneration, conflicts between control and unpredictability, disassembling and re-appropriating the systems that surround us, technological chaos versus human balance — or vice versa.”
Maybe I’d like the sculptures to almost become a stand in for all of human kind, therefore, I am speaking on our relationships with mass imagery in the 21st century and how it causes our view of ourselves to disintegrate and become falsified (which can be shown through glitch art). Through my comparisons of the images of other forms, I am giving the images an opportunity for the reader to see new meaning and to provide a space for them to see the power of an image.
I have always been fascinated with mass media and the countless images we are faced with on a daily basis. It is so overwhelming. So, I think this book could be a space to work through this. Using images of ruins also makes sense it shows spaces that are wearing down over time, which works nicely with what mass media is slowly doing to our understandings of ourselves in countless spaces.
This could be subject to change a bit! Also, title ideas:
“What is to Become of Us”
“What’s Left of Them, What is to Become of Us”
I dunno. These might suck.
Stand by for my next blog post ;)
