8/08/2010

A Vernacular of File Formats

Learning from mr. Compression                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                           
matter-of-the-heart
                                                                                                                                                                              


Noise Art > Filter art > when Cool becomes Hot >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Glitches are hot. It is clear from what we can see on MTV, Flickr, in the club or the bookstore. While the "Glitch: designing imperfection" coffee table book introduces the glitch design aesthetic to the world of latte drinking designers, and Kanye West uses glitches to sing about his imperfect love life, the awkward, shy and physically ugly celebrate under the header "Glitched: Nerdcore for life".
Glitch has become hot. A brightly colored bubblegum wrapper that doesn't ask for much involvement, or offers any stimulus. Inside I find gum that I keep chewing - hoping for some new explosion of good taste - but  the more I chew it, the less tasty and more rubbery it gets. Glitch design fulfills an average, imperfect stereotype, a filter or commodity that echoes a stabilized "medium is the message" standard.

Naturally, the "No Content - Just Imperfection" slogan of this kind of hot glitch design is complimented by cool glitches.
In "The Laws of Cool", Alan Liu asks himself What is "Cool"? He describes that cool is the ellipsis of knowing whats cool and withholding that idea. Those who insist on asking, are definitely uncool.
Cool glitches do not (only) focus on a static end product, but (also) on a process, a personal exploration or a narrative element (that often reflects critically on a medium). This is why cool is in a constant state of flux, as is the genre of "cool glitch art", which finally exists as an unstable assemblage that relies on the one hand the construction, operation and content of the apparatus (the medium) and on the other hand the work, the writer/artist, and the interpretation by the reader and/or user (the meaning). There is no one definition of cool glitch art.

In an effort to make what was once cool now hot, or visa versa, I made this Vernacular of File Formats, in which I studied ways to exploit and deconstructed the organizations of file formats into new, brutalist designs.

…I am waiting for the first "Glitchs not dead" hoodie in H&M. And because "fans are as bad as the ignorant", for the sake of being bad, I will definitely wear the hoodie. Hoera! 
 

No comments: