For this project, blue foam was the medium we used. Our glitch interpretation is divided into 5 stages, each of us performed one glitch;
First stage; we used a chisel and scratched the surface of the foam back and forth. This created multiple ridges and indents which led to the Third stage. Second stage; continuing with the chisel, we randomly stabbed into the foam. The difference between scratch marks and the stabbed holes can be seen clearly. Third stage; with the indentations, it was fairly easy to break the foam onto half using bare hands Fourth stage; we dripped superglue onto the ridges in order to stick this piece back to the original foam but the glue corroded the foam instead. Fifth stage; we clamped the foam onto a clamp
We filmed the whole process using a phone camera without any stabiliser, and naturally our hands would tend to be shaky. We also filmed the last stage of our glitch on time-lapse. The shakiness added intensity of the destruction and also creates a form of glitch during the destruction of the blue foam process. With the added video editing effects on the last part of the glitch, it distorts the whole video as well as the subject making it unnoticeable.
Those systems might be broken, they might be glitched, and they might be imperfect and noisy, and that might be what attracts us or me to those systems. But still they are functional or functioning in one way or another systematically. So they are connected to one another as assemblages. – Randall Packer; Glitch Expectations: A Conversation with Jon Cates.
The end product
Our idea was to destroy a piece of blue foam and then try to piece the broken pieces together using superglue. We didn’t had a plan for the sequence on how we’re going destroy the blue foam, this allows us to embrace the imperfections we made during the process instead of doing it systematically. Typically perfectionist artists would want to cover up the imperfections and only express the perfections. Things are prone to deterioration in time to come. At the end, we have learn to accept the flaws and imperfections in the world be it in the context of an art work or human being.
