GLI.TC/H BUMPER

MUSIC: NULLSLEEP

VIDEO: ROSA MENKMAN

HARDWARE HOLLAA: KARL KLOMP

//publication: Nictoglobe

 

The preparations for GLI.TC/H are well on their way. We released the schedule (still a bit twitchy though) yesterday and I think its going to be really really great. I am looking forward to it a lot!

Andreas Jacobs, who is also in the exhibition part of GLI.TC/H has re-published one of my texts "Artifacts as Critical Media Aesthetics" on his website Nictoglobe - as a contextualization of GLI.TC/H. Check it out!

// US DATES //////////////////////////////////////

GLI.TC/H Chicago, US//////////////////

3-10-'10 – Brunch and final talks /
2-10-'10 – Workshops / Screening / Performance / Disco @ GLI.TC/H/
1-10-'10 – 4:00 - 6:30 Eye & Ear Clinic // 8:00 - 9:00 Screening // 9:00 - Performances /
30-9-'10 – ♪♫ Performance // Conversations At the Edge - GeneSiskel Film Center (TBA) /
29-9-'10 – Some sort of opening event to kick off the activities (TBA) /

//////////////////////////////////////

27->29-9-'10 – Lectures @ classes in SAIC, Chicago, US.
25-09-'10 – Visuals @ Pulsewave, The Tank, New York, US.

18-09-'10 –  Visuals for Peter Kirn @ IN/OUT Festival, The Tank, New York, US.
17-09-'10 –  ♪♫ Performance + Workshop @ IN/OUT Festival, The Tank, New York, US.
11-09-'10 – Visuals (w/NoteNdo) @ 8Static, Studio34, 4522 Baltimore Ave., Philadelphia, US.

//////////////////////////////////////

GLI.TC/H: the washed out jeans politics, or: glitches without borders.

Some days ago, Kyle posted a respons to a blogpost by Evan, one of the organizers of GLI.TC/H. I was very happy to see the critique, because I think it is important to get some conversations going and besides that, I recognize some of the problems Kyle brought up about Evans post - I had them too!

First of all: the "true glitch art" and "false glitch art"-divide-issue. I think the true and false binary was first introduced by Iman Moradi in his thesis on glitch art - and this was one of the main problems I had with his thesis. It is a binary problem that I think is not that important to glitch art. It could be used to describe a glitch, but glitch art is a procedural art that (often) explicitly deals with scrutinizing binary oppositions, categories, genres, etc - Glitch art is about in between, breaking open, going beyond, or into a new membrane… so true and false defies what glitch art is about.

This is why I like to think of the word glitch in glitch art as used in a metaphorical manner.

True or false can be a handle or a starting point, but in the end it is not that interesting to me. What I think is more interesting about glitch art is how a work of glitch art breaks this and other forms of categorizing.

That said, there are a couple of other problems with that claim, which are also reflected in your first problem, the building of a framework of glitch. I guess there are two ways to go:

Either you keep glitch art uncategorized (because glitch art defies categorization), or as an organization you do try to set a framework. I think it is an interesting idea to set a framework, if you realize that the glitches that you show will defy the framework and in that way, as an organization, you might be able to show the "transgressive characteristic" of glitch.

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Be careful because it might feel like I will do a 180 now (oh I would have made such a good skateboarder).

But something does not compute in glitch-art land, or at least within the submissions we have seen at GLI.TC/H. And I am sick and tired to pretend and keep ignoring this. Yes, a glitch is transgressive… yes, glitch art is trying to be transgressive too. But come on! Glitch art or glitch has become a style, a genre, a meme, a form of popular culture as well! There is very often nothing transgressive about glitch art except for that it sort of simulates some form of transgressive-mess. It is a completely accepted form of popular politics. Glitch: the washed out jeans politics.

Fortunately, here also lies another tension. And I think in the submissions, we see this tension coming more and more to the front. On the one hand there are the pushing glitch artists, and on the other hand there are the punks that wear the washed out glitch-jeans politics with or without style. I wished, as I have already made clear in other posts, that in GLI.TC/H we could make this tension more clear. Maybe that is via the building of an exhaustive (or non exhaustive?) framework, or maybe by presenting glitches without borders. I think this is what GLI.TC?H right now has to deal with, thanks to Evan, you and the many (great) datamosh submissions!
 

Why like noise? - by Paul Hegarty

In gli.tc/h the glitchbots would like give form to a spectrum of glitch art: from glitch art as ('cool') serendipity, a tinkering product, a process ---> to glitch art as a concept ----> or even a design (a 'hot' end product). It is very difficult to come to terms with such a paradoxical, complex field of art, but I feel we can learn a lot from other similar fields of research, like for instance noise (art), which has existed for a much longer time and of which I personally believe glitch art to be a subcategory.  This is why I asked Paul Hegarty for his perspectives on noise.

Paul Hegarty is the writer of Noise/Music. A History. (New York: Continuum, 2007) and lives and teaches in Cork, Ir. He also performs noise music.

Why Like Noise? 
(Hegarty, Paul. NSF, Aug 25, 2010)

The idea of noise is spreading…. From music into art into politics….

Why? As a synonym of avant-garde: noise as the unexpected, the dissonant and dissident. Its transgressiveness, which is mostly philosophical, has been misunderstood as subversion, a rule-breaking.

Noise is defined in opposition; to meaning, to sound, to music, and, even to noises. But once claimed in its own right, it is more of a parallel universe where it is hard to find transgression, or make it happen.

As noise is not about just finding noises and playing them. That is noise becoming music.

But there is also a lot of noise becoming music. From the 90s ‘ultimate’ noise of Merzbow and other Japanese artists, we have moved to something like noise rock on one hand and harsh noise wall on the other [play Wolf Eyes]. [genres, power electronics, power noise etc… gen(t)rification, (see RM)]

Noise needs to be thought about as an experience – of difficulty, of defamiliarisation, of unpredictability. But also something physical.

Sound art vs. noise

Sound art can be loud and noisy, and use noises, but there is a difference, and it lies in the intent as perceived by the listener.

Sound art sets up environments. Noise is the wildlife.

Sound art is an immersion. Noise is an overwhelming.

Sound art is reflective. Noise is a bodily presence.

Sound art happens in place of art. Noise happens in place of music.

Sound art is listening. Noise is hearing.

Sound art is a meditation. Noise is a meditation.

But: with sound art, the listener joins seamlessly and drifts thoughtfully.

In noise, the meditation is one of loss and failure (following Bataille, in Inner Experience)

Noise does not mind failure.

Noise looks to push until it fails.

This is why it likes analogue technologies, and why overdriven sounds are not just about loudness but also putting machinery under stress.

Noise is not a primal scream.

Or a boot in the face.

But sometimes it seems that way.

Why Like Noise?

Noise is the unwanted. This creates a problem once you like noise music, it would seem. This is why chance and problems are courted rather than avoided. What does it mean to want noise? [is it masochism? Ref. Deleuze idea of masochism as contract and worldview, not literal pain-liking]

Why make it or listen to it?

It depends if your idea of music or art is about familiarity, about the spectator/auditor having control.

For the player of noise, the aim is to produce an ecstatic non-listening, an in-body experience. For the player of noise, noise should have the same hit as powerful rock music or techno. For the player of noise, forms emerge unexpectedly, like in any other improvisatory practice.
but why noise? The fact that we ask the question shows the value of noise: no-one asks ‘why play guitar/write songs’ etc. or if they do, they can guess the range of responses. For sound art, there can be many goals, but we can usually surmise the conveying of particular spaces, times, feel etc. why aim to disrupt this? Refuse this? Because that is what the difference is: noise is a refusal, one that uses forms to become formless, or apparent formlessness to make forms arise.

Why do I do it?

It’s a rush. It’s just rock. It’s a tribute version of Merzbow.

Are some of the answers I usually give. Noise and reflection do not always go well together.

But, what else: it is an expression without content; without technique in the traditional sense; without purpose. So maybe it seems quite a pure expression, like abstract painting. I’m not really happy with this answer, but.

An impure expression? An expression that has little to do with the person making it – precisely the kind of event where the audience is not ‘free to interpret’ but forced to make sense of it. And this won’t really work, but the process of finding meaning and it dissipating, or being crushed, is interesting. The process is more noise than the noises themselves.

Why would an audience like noise? For the novelty, force, oddness or curiosity )is it music? If so, why and how?)

Or – they come because they know. The fans. The experts. The hardcore. For them, surprise is hard. So weirdly, it becomes very musical again – a question of taste, not judgement about the nature of what’s going on.

Is any of that enough?

I meant to say: Noise is never enough. Always too much.

But i'm not going to.