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Electronic Glitch Artwork Made by 'Weirdos Within the Weirdos' (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the software-that-may-or-may-not-exist dept.

Jake Elliott and Jon (not Elwood) Cates are the ones who describe Glitch Art people as 'weirdos within the weirdos' in the context of Notacon 9, which was recently held in Cleveland. It's 'an annual event that focuses on people who like to build, make, break and hack stuff,' and even in the Notacon context the Glitch Artwork crowd stands out. Sit down with Jake and Jon and share their joy in working with "feral glitches... before they are domesticated," and see some of the output from artist Dave Musgrave's circuit-bent consoles.

13 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Crap Video by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'd much rather see their "art" than listen to them blabber on for 7 minutes.

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    while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
    1. Re:Crap Video by Dave+Whiteside · · Score: 4, Informative

      I agree can I get my 7 mins back please ...
      they could of played more stuff and talked over it if they wanted

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      who where what when now?
    2. Re:Crap Video by Lashat · · Score: 2

      I am glad I read this post before watching the full clip. Thank you Monkey Bush.

      --
      For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
  2. Definition of "artist" has changed... by zakaryah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It now means dabbling in an engineering discipline... poorly. The nouveau team could probably exploit glitches to interesting effect. Although the video does an impressively bad job of conveying what these "artists" do, mostly they are shorting or breaking various connections on video cards to mess up the graphics.

    1. Re:Definition of "artist" has changed... by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It seems to me that art has gone from creating something beautiful (well, usually beautiful) and letting the work speak for itself to now just making something and then having the artist tell people himself what kind of statement he's trying to make, or why it should be significant. Just like if you have to explain a joke it's probably not funny, if the artist has to explain his work then it's probably not art. People can look at the Pieta, or the Sistene Chapel, or Starry Night and figure out what it is. Much of what is passed off as "art" today requires explanation.

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      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    2. Re:Definition of "artist" has changed... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      No, the definition of "artist" has not changed. As has been the case throughout civilized history, people of wildly varying degrees of talent and vision are choosing to call themselves "artist".

      Caravaggio was a "circuit bender" when you see the crazy stuff he did to get colors and textures in his paintings. The sublime Mark Rothko was a "circuit bender" when you consider his abstract landscapes and philosophical paintings. But they had the talent and vision to make something transcendental.

      Noise Art, Glitch Art, etc are just names to give excuses for artists to throw parties. People like Stan Brakhage were working the same territory fifty years ago, and he ended up influencing generations of filmmakers. So who knows? It's all about what happens when you sit down to watch or listen or think (in the case of conceptual art).

      Having said all that, I still would party with these guys. Especially the guy who's trying to explain his...uh...like...control points...that he made...so that...it would...like...create um changes...in the um visuals.

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      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Definition of "artist" has changed... by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 2

      The best explanation I ever saw for this is that with the advent of the photograph, art felt threatened. What was the point of spending a month or even a year painting realism if you could just photograph it? I know, it's different for the high end fine arts, but just to want to know what Edgar A. Poe looked like, it used to be a ritual to try to commission a portrait. Now it's just "Click on a phone camera".

      So then with one of its original purposes swept away, Art has ever since moved out of Realism and into Interpretation.

      The problem of course, is that poorly done modern art is sometimes indistinguishable from the really good stuff - it risks elitist obscurism.

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      My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
    4. Re:Definition of "artist" has changed... by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      I find the idea interesting, though in actual practice it can be done in more or less interesting ways, like anything. I don't care all that much whether it's "art" or not, but I tend to categorize it like that because it seems to fit more there than as "engineering" per se, since the goal is to produce interesting aesthetic effects or investigate some kind of conceptual idea, rather than to produce practical devices that accomplish some goal.

      It's been done for quite a while, in any case. Here's a classic piece done by modifying a CRT so that an audio input signal modulates the electron beam. I like that kind of stuff for a mix of engineering/aesthetic reasons, it's a nice way of probing how a device works by modifying / "breaking" it in various ways.

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      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    5. Re:Definition of "artist" has changed... by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 2

      It seems to me that art has gone from creating something beautiful (well, usually beautiful) and letting the work speak for itself to now just making something and then having the artist tell people himself what kind of statement he's trying to make, or why it should be significant. Just like if you have to explain a joke it's probably not funny, if the artist has to explain his work then it's probably not art. People can look at the Pieta, or the Sistene Chapel, or Starry Night and figure out what it is. Much of what is passed off as "art" today requires explanation.

      Actually, much art has both a allegorical and artistic component. You can enjoy a piece by looking at it; but the meaning behind all of it's symbolism may require explanation to understand what the artist is saying. For example, the National Gallery has many pretty pieces of art and you can simply walk around and admire them; but as one docent explained you really need to stop and look at what's in the work, consider the times and what various things meant, to understand a piece. he then went on to explain in great detail all the meaning behind the various things depicted in a particular work. Did it make it less beautiful or art because it required explanation? No; but it added a whole new dimension to the work.

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      I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
    6. Re:Definition of "artist" has changed... by noelbon70 · · Score: 2

      As much as some people like to disagree, beauty is largely objective. This "glitch art" is objectively *not* beautiful. However, some people find the *concept* beautiful. But once you have moved from objective beauty based in traditional, objective artistic craftsmanship to pure concept, the execution of the concept is less relevant than the concept itself.

      Think about it. What was more interesting in this article? The idea of "making art from computer glitches" or the actual 7 min video and few seconds of actual glitch art?

      Yes, the actual "art" is underwhelming, and you can see by the amount of abstract talking, that it's the idea they are more interested in. This is where concept art just fails. All you must *really* do with concept art is state the idea, and you really can't progress much beyond that.

      The trick with concept art is that you *must* explain it to "get" it. But whip out a classical oil painting and everyone around the world gets that it's beautiful, and that the beauty is intrinsic and universal. Modes of objective beauty may alter to one degree or another between cultures, but the modes are still objective. Compare Japanese brush work to Titian or Raphael. They are different kinds of formal beauty, emphasizing a different aesthetic value, but beautiful nonetheless.

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      Founder: OxbowSEO.com
    7. Re:Definition of "artist" has changed... by DiscountBorg(TM) · · Score: 2

      Boring artist statements aside, arts and engineering/sciences have always been fused together. The music we take for granted today (Well Temperment) with different keys and chromaticisms wouldn't have been able to exist without developments of mathematics in the Rennaisance, and likewise the instruments we take for granted today are the results of engineering, metalwork and so forth (the piano would not exist without such developments). Likewise all the electronic music we listen to today is the result of engineers (or maybe I should say Rennaisance men/women/polymaths) messing about with large-scale DIY projects in the 20th century. Think of it like 'general research' in the Sciences. General research is important because that's how new ideas are discovered. You fuck around and play with ideas and eventually something good comes out of it. And there's definitely a dedicated crowd of enthusiasts for this kind of exploration.

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      "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
  3. Went to Notacon 9 / PixelJam, had a great time by infomodity · · Score: 5, Informative

    I want to thank Froggy for running Notacon for 9 years. I used to help out with Phreaknic in Nashville and I know a little bit of what it takes to run a con. It's thankless work. This year was my third Notacon, always have a good time. It's a great mix of technology, hacking, and art.

    The accompanying PixelJam ran flawlessly and had a lot of great entries in the competitions. Friday night there were great performances. Highlight of Friday was Morgan Higby-Flowers' performance on a circuit bent video mixer. All the audio and video was coming out of one box. He coaxed more sub-bass, fractured noise and glitch visuals out of one piece of antiquated hardware than I've seen other artists get out of racks of expensive modular equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars. More is less.

    Good starting points for learning more about Glitch:

    Nick Briz's site. He's been at this a while and co-founded the GLI.TC/H festival in Chicago.

    http://nickbriz.com/

    Nick's Glitch Codec Tutorial. Also available as a DVD ISO.

    http://nickbriz.com/blog/?p=441

    Evan Meaney teaches at the University of Tennessee, is a founding member of GLI.TC/H, and also works on projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratories supercomputers.

    http://www.evanmeaney.com/glitches.html

    For all the haters on the thread, I totally understand how this might not be your thing. That's what's great about great art: it is polarizing. Your hate makes me know I'm enjoying something special.

  4. Everypony toke now! by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is this a 4/20 post? it's a 4/20 post, isn't it?

    That's 20/4 for those of you on the metric calendar.