Glitché

Glitché is a free iPhone application that lets your mash up your pictures using common computer errors and bugs. Absolutely love the name - the control of unwanted distortions for aesthetic effect is so far removed from the original outcome of a computer error.

Apps like Glitché and others (such as Dscan) certainly make us think about digital imagery elements like pixels and scans. One of my favourite 'glitchy' works (that has always stuck in my head) is this beautiful film by the artist Jon Perez: "a nat geo video of a cheetah running at full pace recorded with a high-speed camera on the world's fastest moving dolly is corrupted into a series of repetitious flows each time the codec uses a new key frame to explore extinction and decay". The translation of informational error into natural issues is fantastic.


destablizing, I from Jon Perez on Vimeo.

On the topic of pixel and glitch, Rosa and I, as a D I S C O U R S E project, ran a workshop yesterday which we called 'Digital Landscape'. As a result of a recent university module I'd taken called 'Reality Sucks: Contemporary Landscape', I wanted to think about how we could make people think about their landscapes in relation to 'the digital'. As a result, we came up with a really simple activity in which we took the urban landscape of Leeds' new domed Trinity Leeds shopping centre in the heart of the city, and attempted to deconstruct it.

By blowing up the image and asking members of the public to identify and apply the photograph's 'pixels' (small cut out squares of black, whit and grey card), our workshop played with aspects of (im)materiality, digital imagery, and contemporary (physical and virtual) landscapes.
More info: http://ahdiscourse.blogspot.co.uk/ and  http://artworksleeds.tumblr.com/

 Below are some pictures I was playing with on Glitché of the original photograph of Trinity that we used in the workshop:

ArtWorksLeeds

ArtWorks at Trinity Leeds Customer service lounge.

D I S C O U R S E are running a digital landscape pixel session 3-5pm Sunday 26th May.

Please come along for some pixel mosaic work and discussion of contemporary landscapes.

Museums and Heritage Show

Rosa and I met a huge amount of creative people working in separate sectors of the arts industry. As a result, we've got a lot of ideas to write up, as well as many interesting contacts to get to grips with. Seriously exciting stuff and a really great conference.

D I S C O U R S E
tumblr

Tetley DIY

Tetley DIY is a project supported by PSL (Project Space Leeds), who will soon be moving to their new location of the old Tetley brewery in the city - exciting.

I'm involved with Breeze International Festival, which is an arts festival run by Leeds City Council that Tetley DIY will be contributing to.

We'll be running a weeks worth of curated arts workshops in the Trinity Leeds customer service lounge in May, and at the moment, we're just in the planning phases of the project - we started last week with the basic idea/notion of 'SHOPPING'.

D I S C O U R S E will be running some workshops, which we're really looking forward to.

In the meantime, here is the project blog:

http://tetleydiy.tumblr.com/

Is conclusive useful?

(introduction:)

When we read an academic piece of writing, or even an online article or blog post, it's usually because we want to know something. They'll be an introduction (like this), the body of the work (to come), and then a conclusion in which there might be a summary and a final thought/opinion. Regardless of the length of the piece, this sort of standard set-up is what we expect. But does that make it good/effective/the most appropriate way to write?
This  question was the topic of a heated discussion in a seminar I attended for uni this week, focusing on a reading we'd been asked to study. This reading discussed the photographic representation of urban non-places (disused industrial areas, etc); but in many ways, what it discussed was irrelevant, because we ended up talking about how it was written. I felt as though the author hid behind references - rather than making clear from the beginning what his interests and aims were, he used examples endlessly, and then never really concluded. It was incredibly frustrating to read, and impossible to make notes about. As a result, most of us thought it was a pretty bad piece of writing. But bizarrely, our tutor praised it.
Rather than maintaining the expected essay set-up, this author was 'brave enough' to simply accumulate information, making the suggestion and encouraging the reader to consider everything as a whole - and thus to make their own decision regarding its point. This might include further research, and a lot of consideration. Our tutor told us that he doesn't believe in conclusions, because they only shut down discussion.
Whilst this initially all sounds quite postmodern, there are certainly some benefits to writing in a different way. Yet having all just submitted our dissertations - not to mentioned enduring three years worth of training in writing essays with an intro and conclusion - everyone got quite pissed off.
This discussion fascinated me, since I'm interested in various forms within the same practice. My own writing (this blog as a project) oscillates between focused posts in which I investigate an idea, and posts in which I'll simply record a link or a video, or an image. With these more basic posts, my intention is that an interested gear talk visitor will follow that link and continue their own mini-investigation - much like the accumulative reference-making within the frustrating essy previously mentioned.

(no conclusion)

(link to further thoughts via D I S C O U R S E )

What do you think?

D I S C O U R S E

D I S C O U R S E

I've started a new collaborative project with my best buddy Rosa. 

We happen to have really similar interests, and almost every conversation we have ends up being about something 'art-related'. We thought it was about time to start documenting all the inspiring things we're respectively learning about at uni, so we've set up a conversational blog. 

I'm really looking forward to getting started, especially since we often work together on interesting projects that we now have an appropriate platform to present.

We just set it up this evening. Enjoy!

D I S C O U R S E