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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SEARCH ARCHIVES

archives begin in 1996

  

Humanity Enabled: AI & the Great Economic Accelleration

story © Michael Betancourt | published December 7, 2020 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: DIGITAL CAPITALISM

I will be giving a talk at the Aspen Institute-Germany conference "Humanity Enabled: AI & the Great Economic Accelleration" on December 8 on the structural barriers to the emergence of the 'society of leisure.' These are not economic but cultural, a confluence of religious and social prohibitions on leisure that simultaneously devalue, demonize, and disenfranchise labor.

The presentation slides can be downloaded here





 
Conspiracy Theories are 'Animistic Fallacies'

story © Michael Betancourt | published September 10, 2020 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: working notes

A vast, evil conspiracy is comforting. The paranoid belief in the capacity of authority to maintain itself and secretly dominate events provides an explanationhidden power acting without oversightthat is easy to understand.




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Abstract Photography - on The Decadent Review

story © Michael Betancourt | published August 3, 2020 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

The Decadent Review has a short essay I wrote on abstract photography.

Abstract photographs undo any certainty about reality; there is nothing to return to, nothing to unmask. The abstract photograph is itself, not a depiction resembling something in the world. Those contents its audience might think they recognize becomes the same uncertain visualization that metamorphic images and optical illusions pose: while there is clearly an image, what it shows is open to discussion, moving within boundaries fixed in such a way that the images seen are not the image shown . . .






 
Solo Exhibition @ Plexus Projects' Vitrene

story © Michael Betancourt | published July 13, 2020 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



movies: SHOWS & SCREENINGS

Plexus Projects is presenting a solo exhibition of work by Michael Betancourt on July, 18, 2020 from 8:00 PM 10:00 PM. Angular Momentum will be featured in Vitrine, an ongoing screening series of moving image artworks.

*Please note projections are viewed from the sidewalk. The project space is not open during Vitrine screening hours:

Plexus Projects
198 Greenpoint Ave. #1
Brooklyn, NY 11222
street level storefront






 
GLITCHASEMICS by Marco Giovenale

story © Michael Betancourt | published May 23, 2020 | permalink | TwitThis Digg Facebook StumbleUpon  |  Print



theory: GLITCH & POSTDIGITAL

The Post-Asemic Press has released the book GLITCHASEMICS by Marco Giovenale with an introduction by Michael Betancourt!

Asemic writing is a type of disturbed writing / criture that cannot be read since it belongs to a completely unknown language, or a language that one is not capable of deciphering, like a set of glyphs or letters coming out of a long lost enigmatic script which resist any attempt at translation. If you disturb waves of asemic writing, it resembles a loud interrupting noise hitting a regular radio frequency signal, you get a double-coded textor image text(ure)s, which double as chaotic graphic micro-events. In this realm is where the "Glitchasemics dwell, with their shining overexposure to colors and extreme illuminated distortions, which also lead to bits of altered perceptions and flashes of already tangled alphabets. In this book there is no return to previously known languages, codes, or habits (even if they are experimental ones). From this point forward, the reader is left in this crossroad area of art and verbo-visual writing, and will encounter a post-literate path without explanation and/or translation, with its very identity asserting itself into the concept of translation, but remaining as an impossible task applied to impossible objects.