CONTENTS

 
   about
   MICHAEL BETANCOURT NEWS
   movies: AESTHETICS
   movies: NEWS & REVIEWS
   movies: SHOWS & SCREENINGS
   random art notes
   random how-tos
   research: AVANT-GARDE MOVIES
   research: MOTION GRAPHICS
   research: VISUAL MUSIC
   theory: CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS
   theory: DIGITAL CAPITALISM
   theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL
   theory: working notes

 

PORTFOLIO

 
Glitch Theory: Art and Semiotics by Michael Betancourt
Movies by Michael Betancourt

 michaelbetancourt.com
 Art of Light Organization
 Going Somewhere
 exhibitions [pdf]
 updates
 books
 contact
 purchase artworks

 
  Video Art listserv
 




 

SEARCH ARCHIVES

archives begin in 1996

  

Defining the Critical Glitch

story © Michael Betancourt | published December 17, 2015 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

Glitch may be best known from its role in electonic music and digital composition, but it is equallyand more commonlya part of the everyday visual engagement with computers. The technical aspects of digital technologypixellated images that re/compose reality as a juxtaposition of discrete fragmentssuggests a translation of visual space into a virtuality, cyberspace, that instead of being continuous is instead shot through with errors and failures of various types. Transfers between this digital technology and art have been a continuous part of its history, but the prominence of digtial imagery and digitally-derived forms has become an insistent part of contemporary media since the opoular embrace of the Internet in the mid-1990s. These visual forms of glitch, unlike its musical counterparts, have consistently been grouped with a variety of other terms, prominent among these are post-digital, post-internet and the new aesthetic; in academic contexts visual glitch will often simply identified with new media art, or occasionally video art.




read more



 
Glitches and the Aura of Information

story © Michael Betancourt | published December 15, 2015 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

Compression glitches have become the most common type of glitch encountered, not only in art, but in our everyday uses of technology. These technical failures are usually transitory, a momentary breach in the continuous datastream; we notice that they happen as quickly as we forget they were there: once they have passed, they vanish not only from the screen but from memory.




read more



 
Glitch Procedures in Helios | Divine (2013)

story © Michael Betancourt | published December 3, 2015 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

The music video produced for Saeed Alis song of the same title, Helios | Divine is 4 minutes long, organized into four sections of approximately equal length. It is designed to act as a posthuman landscape where what we believe we see is not entirely the same as what is actually visible on screen: a complex network of squares and rectangles that twinkle and contain a continually shifting field of colors that combine into larger blocks only to break into smaller, more discrete units. The imagery presented is emergentwhat can be seen when looking at a still image is radically different than the encounter with the moviebut is also composed from uniform squares of color, an effect of the glitching process that stripped recognizable, high definition imagery from the raw footage. This visual development follows the sequence of imagery common to the revelatory experiences described in the 1930s by German psychologist Heinrich Klver. A summary of his imagery describes the progression of Helios | Divine: in a continuously transforming shot (rather than a series of individual, discrete shots), the initial parting of the veil, becomes by degrees a beautiful landscape, then a figure that merges into a large, circular disk with light rays stretching out, followed by a second, darker landscape.




read more



 
An Immaterial Medium

story © Michael Betancourt | published November 30, 2015 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

The particular dimensions of a physical engagement with immateriality in motion pictues depends on the fragmentary nature of the digital medium itself: everything inside the computer exists as numerically encoded data: the fragmentation and digital organization of information that when replayed for a human audience appears continuous via discrete units (commonly called samples) is a given when considering any product of digital technology. These discrete fragments of reality enable the transmission, reproduction, and reassembly that are the common features of any digital technology, and the apparently prefect reproduction originated precisely in the actuality that what is encountered through the immaterial production of the digital work is not a copy so much as a new example produced specifically for the moment of encounter; it is an original. This reassembly from fragmentary samples may not have been an invention of the late nineteenth century, but it was in this period where sampling, coupled with new developments in photography, introduced the essential foundation for the digital transformation of reality into data that enables the digital to function as a perfect reproduction.




read more



 
Previews of My Glitches

story © Michael Betancourt | published November 26, 2015 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

I have an Instagram account with stills from my movies and movie-tests.