Micro-Project: Dream Journal

Task #1:

What I think the performances “Thinking back herself…” and “Bamboo curtain” by Angeline Young means or represents (I did not do any background research because I wanted to learn more about the work through the artist herself. Please pardon me if I have the wrong perception in my initial stages of exploration.).

“Thinking back herself…”

I feel that “Thinking back herself…” is an evocative dance performance on the memories of Angeline’s past, about her mother’s forced migration through China during the Chinese Civil War (c. 1946-1949). Her dance performance was executed with quick and energetic movements, which seems to translate the strong emotions she was feeling as flashes of memories going through her head at that time. The addition of a narration by the artist, in English, makes the work more impactful and meaningful to English viewers as they can understand and empathise with her.

I wonder what does the white powder represent…could it be snow? (Like the period of the Civil War happened in winter, and the vigorous movements of the foot painting in the white powder represents people running in snow?)

“Bamboo curtain”

I feel that “Bamboo curtain” is an intimate dance performance as the artist chose not to narrate in this piece and may have done so because she wants us to focus on her movements and interactions with the inanimate objects around her. In addition to her graceful hand gestures, her incorporation of the sound of nature along with water and the bamboo objects give us an impression of a natural environment with bamboos, birds and water; which was perhaps where she wants us to imagine we are at.

What does the action of taking off your clothing represent? (Could it be…you are entering a warm house from outside which was cold?)


Task #2: Recording your dreams

I did not manage to remember any dreams vividly other than two of them.

  1. My ex-roommate returns to stay with me and I felt really happy because I am no longer alone. My room felt warm and cosy as compared to reality where my room felt cold and empty. She told me that she misses me and knows that I have been good to her, thus she returns to stay with me. When I woke up from my dream, I realised that she was not around and the room only had me.
  2. There were many people holding onto a rope which was swinging between two ends of two mountain cliffs. Tiffany, Erica and I were the last three people on the end of the rope. The rope was swinging at an insanely high speed. Erica asked me if she should let go. I replied that she should and she did. However she let go too late and the inertia brought her crashing onto the opposite cliff we were swinging to. She fell into the water beneath us. I was screaming in my dreams “NOOOOOOOO! No Erica! NOOOOOOOOOO! ERICAAAAA!!!!” and I woke up momentarily, realising that I was moving my mouth to speak up but my voice didn’t come out. Immediately, I went back to my dream again in a desperate attempt for a better ending. Back in my dreams, I was still holding onto the swinging rope. I felt guilty, sad and remorseful as compared to the initial feelings of fear. As my emotions grew heavier and heavier, the rope begins to slow down to a stop. I felt the rough wall of the cliff and made my way down to the water in search of Erica. I dug at the water creating loud splashes and to my surprise, the water was shallow and I immediately felt Erica’s arm in my palms. Erica was alive! She said to me “I am alive!” almost as if she was validating her existence. Tiffany and I carried her out of the water as she appeared motionless. Then I woke up.

Task #3: Translating journal entries into video

⌊Dream part 1⌉

password: Dp1

password: Dp1g

In part 1 of my dream, I was holding tightly onto a rope which was swinging at a rapidly (insanely) high speed between two cliffs of two mountains. I looked up and I saw my friend, Tiffany, who wore an expression of fear, which I think reflects off me. Above her, there were many others like us who were holding onto the rope for dear life. I looked down and I saw my friend, Erica, who was at the end of the rope, experiencing the fastest speed as compared to any other people who were holding onto the rope. She asked me “Should I let go? Should I jump?”. I thought she may stand a chance surviving if she lets go, and I told her to let go. However, the rope was swing so fast, she let go at the wrong moment. She crashed into the rocky walls of the opposite mountain and fell into the water. I was screaming in my heart as I couldn’t hear my voice in the wind. I didn’t want to belief that Erica had fallen in a fatal way. Still holding onto the rope with dear life, I woke up from my dream.

With the addition of glitch, I wanted to show a rocky outlook on my left and right as I swing from one side to another. In addition, I think the glitch goes really well with the feelings I had in my dream: tense, lost, and fearful; as represented by the darkness of my surrounding.

⌊Dream part 2⌉

password: Dp2

password: Dp2g

After I woke up, I fell back to sleep. Apparently, my dream continued with part 2.
In part 2, I was holding onto the rope, except I was feeling different from part 1. I was feeling guilty, sad, and remorseful. I fear that I would not get a chance to speak to Erica again. As my feelings grew heavier and heavier, the rope starts to slow down to a stop. Before I knew it, I could feel the rocky walls with both hands off the rope. I made my way down to the water in search of Erica. To my surprise, the water was shallow. To my amazement, I found Erica very easily and she was still alive. There were no bruises on her and she was saying to me, “I am still alive!”, as if validating her own existence. I grabbed her hand and pulled her up, but she appear motionless. Tiffany and I carried her and we left together.

Here are some images of what I have jotted down of my dream:

IMG_20160224_032917_HDR IMG_20160224_033038_HDR IMG_20160224_033056_HDR IMG_20160224_033157_HDR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading “Micro-Project: Dream Journal”

Research Critique: Glitch Aesthetics (The Collapse of PAL)

To begin with, watch a short video of PAL coloured bars (stop at 0:40 if you don’t want to hurt your ears).

Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television used in broadcast television systems in most countries broadcasting at 625-line / 50 field (25 frame) per second (576i). Other common colour encoding systems are NTSC and SECAM.

Since I was so intrigue with PAL coloured bars and glitch as inspired by Rosa Menkman, I found a way to create a glitch video with the help of an image glitch tool and an extract of the sound track (14 seconds long) from the YouTube video above (Just for fun). I let the tool break the code for me, so I had an easy time.

Rosa_Menkman_RGB_Photoshop_monster

 

Rosa Menkman is an artist and theorist who works with glitch, encoding and audio feedbacks, which are also known as visual noise artifacts. Visual noise artifacts usually occur from unintentional distortions in both analogue and digital media.

page_1

Menkman has written a book, ‘the Glitch Moment/um’, on glitch artifacts, co-facilitated the GLI.TC/H festivals and curated numerous exhibitions on glitch art. She is currently pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths, London.

From page 8 of The Glitch Moment(um),

I describe the ‘glitch’ as a (actual and/or simulated) break from an expected or conventional flow of information or meaning within (digital) communication systems that results in a perceived accident or error.

Unlike many people who show dislike towards these accidents, Menkman shares an optimistic view on them. She sees these artifacts as a tool to help us understand the obfuscated alchemy of standardizations via resolutions. Rosa Menkman’s ‘resolutions’ are ‘studies of solution’. She investigates solutions between different kinds of materials, and what one wants to do with them.

From Rosa Menkman on Resolutions ,

when there is no real question, we need creative problems.

On Rosa Menkman on Resolutions by Institute of network cultures, Rosa Menkman explains why she started to study resolutions:

When she was in New York City, she was walking around even though she was not feeling well. A friend explained to her that he just got the flu vaccination, because there was a big outbreak of flu according to Google Flu Trends. Instead of getting a flu vaccination (like what her friend did) because big data are showing that it would be wise to do so, Rosa Menkman was more interested to know why she was not feeling well. She mentioned that the amount of available data/ information we can find with keywords is so great now, we are no longer bothered to ask questions anymore. Through her glitch explorations, Rosa Menkman advocates that we should learn how to make questions again.

The Collapse of PAL was a video footage first developed as a commission for SOUND & TELEVISION (Copenhagen, Dnk). It is based on the analogue PAL video signal, compressions, glitches and feedback artifacts that are complimented by (obsolete) soundscapes that originate from both analogue (PAL) and digital media (DVB). Rather than a stream-lined sound-image of digital convergence, SOUND & TELEVISION strives to act as a springboard for an aesthetic “media-clash” reflecting on the political-aesthetic of old and new media forms.

From page 8 of The Glitch Moment(um),

By introducing a critical and melodramatic narrative to a work of glitch art, I tried to underline that there is more to glitch art, and more at stake, than just design and aesthetics.

Apart from design and aesthetics, there is signal, noise, liveliness and flow along with standardized production formats in the aspects of the television medium which are reshaped in digital, networked media. The Collapse of PAL is a transmission art project that explores the performativity of television along with challenges brought about by a converging media cape.  In this performance, the transmission itself became the artwork. The performance reflects on different significant aspects of the changing conditions of broadcasting. In the new DVB-T (digital terrestrial television) environment, the very transmission format of TV has changed, from symmetric analog to asymmetric data flows, encoded in the MPEG format and decoded through software implemented in everything from flat-screen TV’s, set-top-boxes and PC’s.

In “The Collapse of PAL” (Eulogy, Obsequies and Requiem for the planes of blue phosphor), the Angel of History (as described by Walter Benjamin) reflects on the PAL signal and its termination. This death sentence, although executed in silence, was a brutally violent act that left PAL disregarded and obsolete. While it might be argued that the PAL signal is dead, it still exists as a trace left upon the new, ‘better’ digital technologies. PAL can, even though the technology is terminated, be found here as a historical form that newer technologies build upon, in- herit or have appropriated from. Besides this, the Angel also realizes that the new DVB signal that has been chosen over PAL is different, but at the same time also inherently flawed as PAL.

So what I understand from this passage is that there is a subject called “the Angel of History” who narrates the story of the termination of PAL signal. In the video, PAL was described to be inherently flawed as “a pile of debris growing skyward” and “connections that were just not good enough”. The new, ‘better’ digital technologies – DVB signal that takes the role of PAL today, was built upon PAL. As the new digital technology, DVB signal, was a development from PAL, traces of PAL remain evident in its inherent flaws. The Angel then realises that the idea of DVB signal having traces of inherent flaws similar to that of PAL, makes DVB signal inherently flawed too. This was quite ironic to me as one would expect that the newer technology should be better and not have persisting flaws from older technology.

Every form of glitch, whether breaking a flow or designed to look like it breaks a flow, will eventually become a new fashion.

To create the video, Menkman had exploited the analog PAL signal from a NES, image bending, a broken digital photo camera, teletekst, digital compression artifacts, video bending artifacts (DV, interlacing, datamoshing and black bursts) and feedback. For the sound, she used a cracklebox, feedback, a telephone eurosignal, morsecode an old Casio keyboard, feedback filters and a couple of DV-compressed video soundbends.

As much as I have researched on The Collapse of PAL, I cannot fully comprehend the process of its making, the tools and media as I have never worked and do not know how to start working on them. These are some of the other readings I did: PAL video timing specification for PAL signals and more readings on Rosa Menkman’s blog.

I would like to end off with two prominent music videos: Kayne West’s welcome to heartbreak (2009, directed by Nabil Elderkin), which was mentioned in a TED video by Rosa Menkman: Glitch – Benchmarking the deranged: Rosa Menkman at TEDxUtrecht, and Chairlift’s evident utensil (2009, Ray Tintori). I am interested on how the videos were made…going to find out more about it’s making and something called datamoshing.

Micro-Project: Glitched Aberrations

Lion Yawning
Lion Yawning

 

Glitch Lion Yawning
Glitch Lion Yawning

 

How to create glitch on mac and windows

I wanted to glitch more images, but the glitch did not work on every images and I wonder why…if anyone know why I couldn’t glitch images the same way I did as referenced from the link above, please leave a comment below! Many thanks ~

So I found out how to glitch more images by editing only along the lower two-third of the Wordpad, except the differences are very subtle. I was hoping for more drastic changes and weird colours coming into the picture, but nope…

Original image of a deer
Original image of a deer
First glitch of deer
First glitch of deer
Second glitch image of deer
Second glitch image of deer
Third glitch image of deer
Third glitch image of deer

 

I like how the glitch images look like distorted flashing images of a moving deer. I don’t know why the glitch images always turn out in a rather neutral tone. Does anyone know how to make colourful glitches?