Research Critique: Bold3RRR by Jon Cates

Bold3RRR is a performance piece by Jon Cates that “combines art with real-time rendering across international timezones in fragments, errors, and overlaps”. Jon managed to display what he deems as “dirty new media” using the space bounded within his desktop screen and design it in a way where it all comes together as a cohesive visual. In Bold3RRR, he toggles between his camera, websites, images, videos and type concurrently, with noise playing in the background, to show how glitches could be used in a broadcasted performance and be aesthetically pleasing to the viewers.

Bold3RRR adopts the use of Desktop as Mise-en-scene by stage designing the props (videos, pictures, web pages, music, windows, webcam images) in a position, area, and sequence, to create a new form of act in cyber space. The use of feedback loops and the organization of his desktop screen goes hand in hand with his intent of showing how glitches could directly associate to reality. The fragmented content that he receives and in return chose to exhibit plays into his idea of “dirty new media”.

In Randall’s conversation with Jon, he mentions how we are living in a techno-social culture and that technology could be socially performed. Our everyday performance with technology has made it more human and has made it part of our lives. I felt that he was blurring the lines between the virtual world and reality itself in a sense that machines are as capable of making mistakes as us humans do. That made these glitches, or so called imperfections, in his performance more acceptable and, perhaps, beautiful too.

“There is a non-neutrality of techno-social artifacts + contexts, that our technologies are not neutral, also that they are embedded, they are part of our lives, + that embeddedness has the word bed in there, we are in bed w/ them also, so they’re embedded in ways that are complex. they are not sterile, they’re imperfect, they are not clean, b/c they exist in the world, which is also imperfect.

– Jon Cates, “Glitch Expectations: A Conversation with jonCates”

I could see how the desktop could be portrayed as going beyond just screen space. It acts as a stage and it is a new avenue for us to create countless possibilities with the advances in technology.