Week 81_Kaspar Ravel
Today's digital signatures, such as compression artefacts, are seen as faults. The race to new and better video codecs avoiding visually lossy content is raging through a commercial enterprise of standards.
The development of an impressionist glitch art form is a reaction to the constant evolution of these codecs, aiming to draw attention towards obfuscated information of failure through the destruction of detail found in artefact beauty. Challenging these complex algorithms using their flaws is a way for these artists to free the pixels from their half-life; giving them sense as malleable entities.
The focus of the selection was set on the fleeting visuals produced by broken video files desperately trying to be displayed correctly. In some cases, movement becomes a crucial element and allows the blending of new colours alongside trails of shadowlike figures. In others, the audience is tricked into an anticipation of something familiar, which is then fragmented by unexpected motion.
Being ultimately dependent on system flaws, these artworks do not only exist in the glitch momentum, but are also active participants in [ today's fight against hard cut technologies] && net existentialist’s theory - that digital art cannot live on without digital error.
The future isn’t brighter, it is yet to be broken.
Kaspar Ravel
