The exploitation of noise artifacts to create critical media aesthetics

Rosa MenkmanEmail: rmenkman@gmail.comHomepage: http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com

1. Serial Cosign. Broken Mac Screenshot. 2008. Screenshot.

Celluloid -> Cathode -> Plasma -> LCD

2. Len Lye. A Colour Box, 1937.

4. Cory Arcangel. Panasonic TH42PV60EH PLasma Screen Burn, 2007. 5. webcrash2800. %SCR2, May 16, 2009

3. Goto80 and Rosa Menkman. Eastern Fire Swim, 2007.

Our constant search for complete transparency has brought us new, more ‘perfect’ media. Even so, all these media have their own fingerprints of imperfection.

The continuing search for a noiseless channel is no more then a regrettable, ill-fated dogma.

Within Shannon and Weavers model, there are three instances when the static notion of transmitting information is interrupted and that result in artifacts:

Encoding / decoding (compression), Glitch and Feedback

Become a nomad of noise [artifacts]

6. RyBN performing MONOCHROME, (Cimatics Festival, Brussels: 28 November 2008)

7. Still from registration of Botborg performance at TransAcoustic, Auckland, New Zealand, December 2005.

<http://www.botborg.com/index.php?go=imageslive> 3 May 2009.

8. Beflix. Glitch (12). 2001-2005, re-colored 2007. Fuji Crystal Archive prints from hi-res digital images <http://www.beflix.com/works/glitch.php?id=121> 1 May 2009.

Exploit compression, feedback and glitches!

Failure is better than progress! Join the avant garde of the failure!

10. Jodi. <$BLOGTITLE$>. 2006-2007. webpage.9. Screenshot of Goto80 and Autoboy. HT GOLD. 2008. Videogame for Commodore 64.

Challenge actors (hard/software, input and public) genres, interfaces and expectations

Glitches inevitably become filters

11. Takeshi Murata. MONSTER MOVIE, 2005.

Glitchspeak (opposing ʻNewspeakʼ: Orwell, 1984.) is not just a new form, but an exoskeleton of progress. The glitch is a new generative form. This is why there is a need for Glitch Studies.

Speak the totalitarian language of disintegration

The role of artifacts in critical media aesthetics is a trans-media aesthetics (not a post-media aesthetics)

* Shows a medium in a critical state (ruined, unwanted, not recognized, accidental and horrendous state)

* Critique the medium (genre, interface and expectations)

12. Friedrich, Caspar David. The wanderer above the sea of fog. 1818. Oil on canvas, 98 × 74 cm. Hamburg: Kunsthalle.