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

 

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

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archives begin in 1996

  
 
avant-garde movies, motion graphics, and theory
 
by Michael Betancourt
 

This site presents extracts from Michael Betancourt's current research and writing projects, with news about current developments. A portfolio of finished, published writing is available here.

His trilogy of studies on film theory using title sequences as a model uniting avant-garde, documentary and commercial motion pictures were published in the Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice series: Semiotics and Title Sequences, Synchronization and Title Sequences, and Title Sequences as Paratexts.

If you are looking for more on agnotology, digital capitalism, or automated/immaterial labor and AI, look at The Digital, which presents links to his most recently published articles and other research on the political economy of digital capitalism contained in his books The Critique of Digital Capitalism and Force Magnifier. This analysis identifies how digital technology has captured contemporary society in a reification of capitalist priorities that includes the shift to automation and AI. The theory proposed in this book is the description of how digital capitalism as an ideologically invisible framework is realized in technology.

You can watch his movies here.

More articles, reviews, interviews, and translations are posted on MichaelBetancourt.com


 


GLITH ::: VERLUSTKONTROLLE [Control of Loss]

story © Michael Betancourt | published November 21, 2023 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

Digitalvilla on Hedy-Lamarr-Platz & on ZooM
Part of the ZeM Annual Focus 2023/24 "Control of Loss"
Press Interview & Book Presentation: Monday 4th December, 3 p.m.

Registration required: kontakt@verena-voigt-pr.de




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showing at Digital Graffiti 2023 on Alys Beach, FL

story © Michael Betancourt | published May 18, 2023 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



movies: SHOWS & SCREENINGS

My movie Making Gestures, Seeing Sounds is installed at site #41 in Digital Graffiti which opens Friday, May 19!







 
FYI: a Partial Pre-History of Glitch Art

story © Michael Betancourt | published April 27, 2023 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



research: AVANT-GARDE MOVIES

Glitch Art has claimed an extensive history of precedents and sources throughout both art history and media art. The contemporary use of digital glitches as a source of aesthetic and expressive imagery emerges from the lineage of avant-garde exploits of media and technology in the early twentieth century, and before that, the concerns of the Arts and Crafts movement with demonstrations of the 'human hand' in art making during the nineteenth century.

This small (and incomplete) selection highlights artists working at the end of the twentieth century who were employing glitches self-consciously in their work, but were active before, or apart from, the later social media groups on Flickr and Facebook that consolidated and brought the idea of glitches-as-art into general public consciousness. It should not be considered an exhausive, final or even complete presentation of the early artists pioneering glitches and Glitch Art, but is instead offered as a sampling of the kinds and range of works being done.





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Introducing The "AImage"

story © Michael Betancourt | published April 18, 2023 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

In order to distinguish the generative visual products of AI systems from other types of imagery such as photographs, I have decided to create a neologism, the "AImage," to identify these works and distinguish them from other types of images. This rhetorical gesture distinguishes these statistical products from other machine made images such as CGI or photography, while providing a readily apparent label that has the same immediacy as "photo."






 
XPRMNTL anti-festival 2023, London, UK

story © Michael Betancourt | published January 24, 2023 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



movies: SHOWS & SCREENINGS

My movie [Redshift] will be screening in London later this spring!