By
Greg J. Smith on
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at
12:00 pm
Cover of "Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction"
Many scholars within the field of media archaeology opt to focus on the backstory behind an influential medium or technology and map out how its inception and organizational logic (re)shaped the world. An alternative approach is the excavation and arrangement of fringe/forgotten prototypes into an array to problematize dominant historical narratives regarding technological progress. Caleb Kelly's recent text Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction uses two consumer technologies, the phonograph and the compact disc, to survey 20th century musical and artistic production. The book catalogs a broad range of experimentation with these playback technologies to create detailed timelines of misuse and critical engagement. In bracketing this realm of sound-producing practice, Kelly proposes "cracked media," a subversion of technological devices whereby "...tools of media playback are expanded beyond their original function as a simple playback device for prerecorded sound or image." Given the prominence of the glitch and lo-fi malformed digital artifacts everywhere from media art to pop music to web video, it is easy to take the aesthetics of failure for granted. The investigation executed within Cracked Media prefigures many of the discussions that underpin generative and glitch aesthetics by focusing on work that foregrounds and interrogates the materiality of two specific mediums. Kelly methodically tracks projects that subvert the CD and phonograph over the entire 20th century and in doing so he builds a fascinating discourse about musical performance and reproduction that is equally comfortable referencing Friedrich Kittler as DJ Qbert.
One of the questions at the core of Cracked Media is "how many times can you force something into failure before it becomes creatively uninteresting?" Kelly suggests that key projects by artists such as Christian Marclay and Oval provide us with a variety of approaches for "manipulating, cracking and breaking" media. This takes us into a realm of creative interventions that range from temporary hacks to CDs and vinyl records (eg. the application of tape to the playback surface) to more dramatic (and permanent) alterations such as scratching to outright disassembly. A taxonomy of alteration and damage is developed and Kelly proceeds to consider these strategies as a gateway into the critique of musical production and consumption. Cracked media is imbued with a new performative capacity, one that revels in noise ("extraneous information") as an inevitable occurrence and as a raw material for new construction. The subsequent two chapters telescope out of this discussion of noise and are written as extremely detailed chronologies dedicated to each of Kelly's chosen mediums.
According to Kelly, the phonograph is one of the most enduring musical artifacts of the 20th century and the author succinctly contextualizes how the device operates for passive playback and can also be harnessed as an instrument. Cutting from hip hop culture to a 1914 performance of Erik Satie's Le Piege de Méduse, he then proceeds to list a number of instances of "prepared" instruments and early compositions involving turntables then transitions into a detailed examination of sound and the Fluxus movement. This discussion contains summaries of early work that includes "Neu Musik Berlin," a 1930 turntable concert organized by composers Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch, John Cage's prescient Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939) and Cartridge Music (1960) and Nam June Paik's Random Access (Schallplatten-Schaschlik) (1963). The momentum generated through examining these precedents leads into analysis of the turntable-based work of Milan Knížák, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Akiyama Tetsuji, Michael Graeve and Lucas Abela.
By
John Michael Boling on
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at
10:50 am
Silver (2006) - Takeshi Murata (Murata used this same pixel bleeding effect in his 2005 piece Monster Movie)
umbrella zombie datamosh mistake (2007) - Paper Rad & Paul B. Davis
These Murata and Paper Rad/Davis videos are two early examples of manipulating digital compression to produce pixel bleeding for artistic effect. In the last week, two mainstream music videos have been released by Chairlift and Kanye West that use this effect, and it has come to be known as "datamoshing." Heralded as a brand new innovation by some, the near simultaneous release of these two music videos have fans of each musical act crying foul. But, as the two videos above indicate, these techniques have been in circulation for a number of years now. It seems an argument concerning the origin of "datamoshing" is unnecessary, given that almost everything is built upon something else.
If you know of other examples of this technique please post them in the comment section.
By
Ceci Moss on
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at
3:00 pm
Takeshi Murata, Escape Spirit VideoSlime, 2007 (Installation view, Ratio 3 - San Francisco)
Tonight at 6:30pm, artist Takeshi Murata will screen a selection of his recent works and upcoming projects at Electronic Arts Intermix. This will be followed by a discussion with EAI's Josh Kline. Murata has developed his own unique method of processing digital glitches and errors to produce his vivid abstract videos and animations. An innovator in the field of digital video, the event this evening will be his first artist's talk in New York City. Not to be missed!
Statement: This video is an animation of the process of saving an image file in continuously lower file formats over hundreds of times.
This image is of a quote, taken from Douglas Davis' essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction," which argues (in part) that unlike analogue signals, which are like waves crashing upon a beach and losing clarity with every ebb of the tide, digital bits "can be endlessly reproduced, without degradation, always the same, always perfect."
