Dithered JPG Macroblocks

Zooming into quantization error                                             

Obituary of PAL :: Prologue and Eulogy

I recommend watching this with headphones. This is a render of part 1. of the Collapse of PAL (1. Eulogy, 2. Obsequies and 3. Requiem for the blue plains of phosphor), as performed at TV-TV on the 25th of May 2010, Copenhagen, DK. SOUND & TELEVISION is a transmission art project that explores the performativity of television in light of the challenges brought about by a converging mediascape. Signal, noise, liveness and flow along with standardized production formats are all aspects of the television medium which are reshaped in digital, networked media. Rather than a stream-lined sound-image of digital convergence, SOUND & TELEVISION strives to act as a springboard for an aesthetic "media-clash" reflecting on the political-aesthetic of old and new media forms. SOUND & TELEVISION invited me to work with the materiality of audiovisual flows to realize a performance exploring the performativity of television. In this performance, the transmission itself became the artwork. The performance reflects on different significant aspects of the changing conditions of broadcasting. In the new DVB-T (digital terrestrial television) environment, the very transmission format of TV has changed, from symmetric analog to asymmetric data flows, encoded in the MPEG format and decoded through software implemented in everything from flat-screen TV's, set-top-boxes and PC's. "The cracking of LCD screens" ...all is not smooth in this world of digitally compressed TV. In "The Collapse of PAL" (Eulogy, Obsequies and Requiem for the planes of blue phosphor), the Angel of History (as described by Walter Benjamin) reflects on the PAL signal and its termination. This death sentence, although executed in silence, was a brutally violent act that left PAL disregarded and obsolete. However, the Angel of History has to conclude that while the PAL signal might be argued death, it still exists as a trace left upon the new, "better" digital technologies. PAL can, even though the technology is terminated, be found here, as a historical form that newer technologies build upon, inherit or have appropriated from. Besides this, the Angel also realizes that the new DVB signal that has been chosen over PAL, is different but at the same time also inherently flawed. The Collapse of PAL was first developed as a commission for SOUND & TELEVISION (Copenhagen, Dnk). “A transmission art project that explored the performativity of television in the light of the challenges brought about by the converging mediascape.” The video footage is based on the analogue PAL video signal, compressions, glitches and feedback artifacts that are complimented by (obsolete) soundscapes that originate from both analogue and digital media. For the video I exploited the analog PAL signal from a NES, image bending, a broken digital photo camera, teletekst, digital compression artifacts, video bending artifacts (DV, interlacing, datamoshing and black bursts) and feedback. For the sound I used a cracklebox, feedback, a telephone eurosignal, morsecode an old Casio keyboard, feedback filters and a couple of DV-compressed video soundbends. //////////////////////////////////////////////////

Zugzwang. The downfall came when the reach exceeded the grab.

Feedback from the videomixer, aliasing artifacts as a result of digitization.░░░

Extrafile vs GLI.TC/H vs. A Vernacular of File Formats

  ████

████For his graduate research into the role of the digital File Formats in the arts, Kim Asendorf developed Extrafile: "New image file formats for artistic purposes". The Extrafile software gives artists and designers the opportunity to create exclusive file formats to personalize works of art.

Extrafile offers an escape from the pandemonium of licensed image file formats (standards), the proprietary protocols that are under the rule of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), who authors, dictates and judges standardization laws since 1947 (way before 1984!). ISO, the part-time big brother of codecs, developed some of the most important encoding protocols in the digital realm, amongst whom for instance JPG. 

Extrafile could thus also be read as a critique and employed as a rebellion against an image-dictator that has been in power for over 60 (!) years.

Kim invited a group of databending/glitch artists to use the Extrafile software, to exhibit some of the results in his graduation show. I was proud to be one of invited artists and finally adopted the software to use it in collaboration with Monglot. Next week 3 of my favorite outcomes will be exhibited in Het Hoogt in Utrecht, as part of Re:Visie and the NFF, alongside the original prints of the Vernacular of File Formats. But here is a digital spoiler (the exhibition will last for a month and a half and the official opening will be on the 23th of September).

As guestcurator for the online gallery component of GLI.TC/H 2011, Kim open(sourc)ed the Extrafile software, which is since this night available for the public. You are invited to use Extrafile to develop bumpers, banners and posters for the GLI.TC/H festival which is confirmed to take place in the autumn of 2011, on different locations, on two different continents! Wohoo!

‘Acceleration vs. Compression’, 2011 at Or-Bits.com

Marialaura Ghidini asked me to contribute to her Acceleration Show on Or-bits.com. I really like the theme and I wish I would have had more time to write or make a more extensive work for her. The online show opened last weekend and has some nice spocky references. Here are some more details about my work, for the work itself and the rest of the exhibition you should check out the or-bits website.

‘Acceleration vs. Compression’, 2011

I aimed to make a short audiovisual work, but once I had finished it, I did not feel satisfied; I think that it was because the sounds I created for the animation did not feel right.

The original video was compressed as an AVI Cinepak, which is an obsolete compression since its colour palette is not being recognised anymore – this is why the colors look so psychedelic –.

I decided to delete the sound and to shorten the piece into an animated GIF.

The compression of the GIF is an old fashioned compression that cuts out a lot of data, in order to be able to be downloaded faster – it is a “save for the web” setting –-.

The GIF will accelerate when it is loading.

To me this is a form of technological poetry, visualizing the story about deletion by compressions, in order accelerate. 

//Filtering Failure Exhibition; opening 25/2 (until 1/4), Planetart, Amsterdam.

In two weeks the exhibition Filtering Failure (25-2 until 1-4) will open here, in Amsterdam. The exhibition is curated by me and Julian (C-Men) and reflects on the relations between the processes of  ering and Failure.  

    ------------------------------------------
In a culture that is continuously accelerating, filters have become a primal commodity. We use them both to open and to close ourselves to or from any kind of possible information.        

Filters are ubiquitous, however we only realize their presence when we lack them, or when they fail our expectations.

The exhibition Filtering Failure investigates (the connections between) these procedural terms ‘filtering’ and ‘failure’ and how in (lo-fi) digital arts these terms are being re-invented and re-used.
 
We can set at least 3 different ways of Filtering Failure apart;

There is the filtering of failure as a garbage or redundant residue (the necessary filtering of all the information we encounter, all the time). Here the focus lies on the everything that has not been filtered, which is the information that will be used.  
Secondly, the title can be interpreted as the failure of filtering, which will result in information overload ("It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure" - Clay Shirky).     
Lastly, Filtering Failure can refer to the process of filtering failure as a wanted result. In the exhibition we start from this latter perspective, while trying to show a tension between the two first forms.
                  Failure can r ef      er

                  Failure ca n ref      er

The exhibition asks how Filtering and Failure co-exist; and how these processes influence each other. I hope to see you there, at the opening, or later in the month!

Mo-Fr 14/17h. Wibautstraat 150 (Volkskrant building), Amsterdam. www.planetart.nl

Monglot [A glitch software]

Of Mimicry and Glitch Art: The Ambivalence of the 'colonial' Glitch Art discourse**

Download Monglot

Monglot works on MACOSX some 10.5s and 10.6 - We had no chance to program it for other OSs'. But I really hope some time we can.  

Why make another glitch software

About half a year ago I logged into the "Glitch Art"-Flickr-pool to find inspiration for a 5 day workshop on glitching, that I was to give at the AKI (an Art School here in The Netherlands). Nothing seemed to have changed since the last time I logged in; the pool that once seemed so progressive, suddenly felt cold and boring, standardized, slow and in a general lack of inspiration. I found the images not interesting, they did not break any order and definitely not altered my state of mind or induced some kind of new thoughts. In hindsight I would summarize it as a collection of random pretty-girls-or-cats-as-subject (because that will never bore) - images, obfuscated by bright macro-blocks holding wrong luma and chroma values - further 'corrupted' by anti-aliasing, blocking, checker boarding, and other forms of distortion (yes, I could make the cool a-to-z artifact-list --- humor me).

5. Realize that the gospel of Glitch Art also tells about new standards implemented by corruption.

Not all Glitch Art is progressive or something new. The popularization and cultivation of the avant-garde of mishaps has become predestined and unavoidable. Be aware of easily reproducible glitch effects, automated by softwares and plug-ins. What is now a glitch will become a fashion.**

What I found in the Glitch Art Flickr pool were images opposing my original definitions of glitch (a short-lived fault in a system, inducing affects like surprise or shock) and Glitch Art (art that radically revalues normative knowledge, values and expectations). Instead, the pool underpinned a more ruptured discourse of Glitch. It showed an ironic, conflicted compromise between what I think of as the 'Other' form of Glitch (which is progressive or against the grain) and a commodified, superficially stylized form of glitch art (which is driven by the colonizing power of an aesthetically driven economy).

This double edged sword of todays Glitch Art has cut deep into the glitches' origins, forcing us to return back to our initial definitions. Glitch art as a style recalls Homi Bhabhas': "almost the same, but not quite" or a 'mimicry of digital slippage'; the real glitch of Glitch Art has slowly diminished into a virtual signifier, while the popular, commodified side of glitch has become a primal part of the new glitch-economy. This has left me thinking if in my Glitch Studies I should pay more attention to this 'other side of the coin'.

For the workshop at the art school I finally decided to teach about the materiality of file formats; their different languages, slang or dialects and what specific qualities, rules and rhetorics (slang poetry) can be exploited as a generative matter to create new images (a practice closely related to databending). I named the workshop "A Vernacular of File Formats" and showed different compression based artworks I have found over time while supplying the students with methods and tools to create their own format based research, and finally artworks.

One of the troubles I ran into during the workshop was that the tools I had were not ideal for such a workshop; with every other file format we set out to manipulate we had to switch softwares (which between the different OSs' on the students computers became a real *pain*). Because of all these troubles I felt it would be best that any future workshop would be accompanied with some basic visual support. I started working on the Vernacular of File Formats - a pdf that was first exhibited at GLI.TC/H and that later became a series of images. As I wrote back then, in this pdf I set out to make what once was cool, hot (think McLuhan) to emphasize the double edged sword of glitch. I hoped (wished) that in this way, the banal graphic effects that have by now (at least to me) lost all their extraordinary, revelatory potential, would be demystified and that subsequently more artists would start to think about how they can develop another dimension in their art (besides glitch just being a material research or aesthetic element). Of course, serendipitously, after releasing the pdf I got about ten emails asking me about specific technicalities of working in the different file-format cases…

Finally, during my residency in Sao Paolo, I started working on the Glitch Studies Manifesto-movie (that is still in production), of which the Vernacular of File Formats is an undeniable section. I spoke to Johan Larsby (who previously coded Swutits) about the lack of a software that can help me both in teaching and in the creation of images (and possibly movies) that would complement Glitch Studies, the Manifesto and the other work I had done in the past. This is when the Monglot project really started.

About Monglot (order and progress // chaos and destruction)

The name Monglot is a degeneration of the terms Mongrel and Monoglot (the term also references Homi Bhabha's "forked tongue" of colonialism and my idea of Glitch speak).

*/
Mongrel: the offspring of varieties of a species, mixed background, bastard, or an imperfect crossbreed

Monoglot: knowing only one language; monolingual.
*/

The Monglot software generates glitch images by mashing two languages in one final image; first of all the visual language of the image and secondly the image-data encoded in the language of the compression, that erupts over the surface of the former. This is how common glitch aesthetics like fragmentation, grain, ghosting, heterodynes, interlacing, jitter, jaggies, (…) posterization, pixelating, quantization error, ringing, staircase noise, scan lines (…) are being generated (mimicked?) and come to the surface.

Monglot aims to show the ambivalence (cool vs. hot) and the double articulation (encoding vs. image data) of (File Format-based) Glitch Art. The images generated in the software are ironically standardized by repetition and as such exist as a compromise in-between cool and hot glitches.
Monglot can be used to learn and research different file formats and their behaviors. This process of experimenting with different file types and their surprising effect are (I hope at least) part of this software. The thinking and interpreting that this process calls for (opens up) is a field that comes close to a "cool medium". Which is not the case with many other softwares that only accept one or 2 different file formats for experimentation and that actually carry a standard instead of opens the standards up for questions. (in most softwares the endproduct is the focus, not the /experimental/ generative part). 
This makes Monglot exists as a glitch discourse in-between the lines, against the rules and within them, which is where I think we should look for the discourse of Glitch Art and Glitch Studies.

By normalizing (standardization through rules and repetition) the glitched states of the image the maker develops (new) knowledge of the compression language of the image. At the same time Glitch Art (as progressive and against the grain) becomes a virtual entity (a concept that is only referenced). Monglot thus imposes failure strategically, as a norm, to fork itself from the realm of Glitch Art.

Monglot Manual

Monglot is best used next too the Vernacular of File Formats.

The Monglot software allows you to insert random hex-data into an image, while allowing you to transcode the same image into different file formats. This will make the effect of the insertion of the same random data on the same image encoded in a different image file formats apparent.

The interface

* The Glitchspeak number is the iteration of random data you want inserted into your image data. If you re-click the Glitchspeak button with the same number inserted before you click EAffect! you will get the same random data inserted into your image and thus the same outcome (depending on if you used the same image or the same vernacular).

* Replace √ allows you to replace one value in the hex-code with another (if you want to do this, you will have to √check√ the Transgress button)

* The Progress <-> Order slider allows you to set the amount of random image data inserted in your image. Notice that complete order and complete progress have some ironic outcomes.

* The Vernacular drop down menu allows you to choose in what file format you would like your image to be transcoded. Unfortunately there are only a few file formats freely available in the Cocoa image library and these are the ones that are available in Monglot. In the future I hope we can change these and insert more options. To get different outcomes. If you want to play with different outcomes and file formats now, you have to open an image that is already encoded in a different image file format (via for instance photoshop or preview). Try all the different encodings of for instance PNG (interlaced and non-interlaced) or TIF (compressed and non compressed) and learn about the differences these encodings make.
If you want to use the original file format encoding, choose Vernacular and open your image again.

* Batch √ allows you to make a batch process (to make a number of different glitch-iterations of the same image).

* Conserve √ allows you to save the images in a folder called Monglot. Make sure you empty this folder regularly otherwise you will fill up your harddrive (I have managed to write 70GBs of data in under a minute when I used the Monglot batch processes).

* EAffect is the button you click to make the 'magic' happen.
EAffect is an ironic reference to the discourse of glitch that has been standardized (undermined) by the abuse of words like Effect, Affect, Transgress, Politics while the theorists don't even explain (or probably know) what they really mean when they use them.

* FIT is the button that is supposed to make the image FIT, but right now it just stretches in one dimension (this is a known Bug-hug).

* GFD (Glitch File Directory - to be found in the toolbar) allows you to make animations (and movies, for instance when you use it in combination with Quicktime 7). Export your video to an image sequence and load this file directory via GFD in Monglot. Save the glitched images in another file directory and open this directory as an image sequence.

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

Monglot is programmed by Johan Larsby. He did a great fantastic job for the very little time we had - because unfortunately-fortunately he got a new work-contract (and now he can only code for his employer). So... Johan and I were forced to cut the production/programming on Monglot short. I worked to make the software presentable (in this beautifully difficult interface), but it is still full of little and bigger bugs (but what is a glitch software without bugs?). I hope some time in the future we can make it better and develop it further. For now it is a conceptual software.

Monglot works on some 10.5s and 10.6 - We had no chance to program it for other OSs'. But I really hope some time we can.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Shout outs to brother projects (uncomplete..)
Benjamin Gaulon: Corrupt™
Károly Kiripolszky: ByteMolester 0.9 (RIP)
Iman Moradi, Ant Scott and Dimitre Lima: glitchbrowser (RIP)
Youpy: Glitchmonkey
Johan Larsby: Swutits
Sven Konig: Appropirate! / Download finished!
UCNV: AVI GLITCH & GlitchPNG
Jon Satrom & Ben Syverson: Satromizer
Nick Briz: Glitch dvd tutorial project
Stallio: for all his tutorials
Kim Asendorf: Screenfuck
Datamosher: Datamosh tutorial
Vade&bangnoise: too many things 

Pixelnoizz

 
Monglot is developed with the support of the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound, Stichting Impakt and the BKVB.

Over the rainbow, there are PAL/NTSC treasures

I was trying to record my video signal, and got these really beautiful but bizar rainbow artifacts. I have seen them before(12)... but this time they were extra specially pronounced.(maybe this makes up for never having seen the northern light)
In preparation for my gig in TRANSMEDIALE next week!!

//Brescia, Italy: Order and Progress. And the premiere of Monglot

I dont have a lot of time because I will have to leave the computer very very soon, to go to Brescia, Italy to set up the Order and Progress show, but also I did not not want to post this:: 

In Brescia I will be showing some old and new works, but most excitingly, Monglot, a new software by me and Johan Larsby  will premiere! The video above is a video I made with the software and the prints that will be on display in Brescia are also made with the help of the Monglot. Monglot is one of the projects I worked on in my residency at MIS and I am so happy its finally almost finished!

Monglot 

*/

Mongrel: the offspring of varieties of a species, mixed background, bastard, or an imperfect crossbreed

Monoglot: knowing only one language; monolingual.

*/

Now I am going to run, but to keep the tension, I will post the software after the weekend: whooohoo!!

Digital ate the cassette tape

 ∆  Gli.tc/h ∆ 

Daniel Wilsons asked me to help him with the practical part of his master thesis graduation.
The final work was Digital Ate The Cassette tape, an VHS commission for the practical part of his master thesis graduation. The work was exhibited as a VHS, playing in a video recorder. It also came with an typewriter label. The Final video shows signs of digital and analog compressions, to show that both realms possess noise artifacts. The video also has a piece of glitch studies manifesto. 

Sound mix by Daniel Wilson (he sampled the sound of a test tape/card, the eurosignal \\which I used to wake up with many mornings when I was young// and generation loss). Video is by me. 

A Vernacular of File Formats (2) - Workshop

go backwards to navigate forward  or download the pdf!
This pdf describes part of the workshop "A Vernacular of File Formats" that I gave at ArtEZ, (Enschede, NL. April, 2010).                                                                                                                 

I will also give this workshop in the coming months:                                                                  

17->18-09-'10 – IN/OUT Festival, The Tank, New York, US.                                                         

29-> 3-9-'10 - gli.tc/h, Chicago, US.                                                                                         

Download in lofi quality here (7 mb) or hifi quality here (118 mb, yes its very big but it allows to zoom into most of the textures as close as you want).                                                                     

  

A Vernacular of File Formats

Learning from mr. Compression                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                              

Noise Art > Filter art > when Cool becomes Hot >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Glitches are hot. It is clear from what we can see on MTV, Flickr, in the club or the bookstore. While the "Glitch: designing imperfection" coffee table book introduces the glitch design aesthetic to the world of latte drinking designers, and Kanye West uses glitches to sing about his imperfect love life, the awkward, shy and physically ugly celebrate under the header "Glitched: Nerdcore for life".
Glitch has become hot. A brightly colored bubblegum wrapper that doesn't ask for much involvement, or offers any stimulus. Inside I find gum that I keep chewing - hoping for some new explosion of good taste - but  the more I chew it, the less tasty and more rubbery it gets. Glitch design fulfills an average, imperfect stereotype, a filter or commodity that echoes a stabilized "medium is the message" standard.

Naturally, the "No Content - Just Imperfection" slogan of this kind of hot glitch design is complimented by cool glitches.
In "The Laws of Cool", Alan Liu asks himself What is "Cool"? He describes that cool is the ellipsis of knowing whats cool and withholding that idea. Those who insist on asking, are definitely uncool.
Cool glitches do not (only) focus on a static end product, but (also) on a process, a personal exploration or a narrative element (that often reflects critically on a medium). This is why cool is in a constant state of flux, as is the genre of "cool glitch art", which finally exists as an unstable assemblage that relies on the one hand the construction, operation and content of the apparatus (the medium) and on the other hand the work, the writer/artist, and the interpretation by the reader and/or user (the meaning). There is no one definition of cool glitch art.

In an effort to make what was once cool now hot, or visa versa, I made this Vernacular of File Formats, in which I studied ways to exploit and deconstructed the organizations of file formats into new, brutalist designs.

…I am waiting for the first "Glitchs not dead" hoodie in H&M. And because "fans are as bad as the ignorant", for the sake of being bad, I will definitely wear the hoodie. Hoera!