Here's an idea, glitchy artworks
can show us how beautiful broken really is.
Who doesn't love broken stuff?
Most people, I would imagine.
Broken stuff is kind of drag.
Unless, of course, we're talking about the smash 1996 John Woo
film "Broken Arrow" starring John Travolta and Christian
Slater, in which case broken things are quote,
"drably low tech and brimming over with visual cliches."
You're out of your mind.
Yeah, ain't it cool?
OK, so but really, mid '90s move reviews aside,
you can't really argue with the growing popularity of media
that is busted on purpose.
And I don't mean "Broken Arrow" style recycled,
meaningless pulp busted, but like structurally,
formally busted.
Like this.
Sometimes filed under the catcg-all blurry genre
designation of glitch, there has long
been a wide stripe of music, visual performance,
and even video games employing a kind of malfunctionesque style.
And you might think given the frustration we experience
with broken things-- cue "Office Space" clip--
we might want as little of that in our lives as possible.
So there has to be some kind of reasoning
behind our less than three of the less than pristinely
functional.
It is certainly fair to say that some of this
has to do with nostalgia.
Tons of the harsh, sputtering, brightly colored media
we see using the stuff is busted look either references
or actually uses older technology.
8-bit sound in video, magnetic and VHS tape,
VCRs, mini disks, CDs, all intimately associated with eras
give many of us the warm fuzzies,
doubly so if you work at BuzzFeed.
And your parent's attic is probably
filled with this stuff, so you can go dig it out
and it probably still works or even better, sort of works.
As technology becomes more electronic and less physical,
broken becomes a binary state.
It either works and is usable or is broken and is only
good as a seat or nutcracker.
Rare are the naturally arising malfunctions in Blu-ray players
or laptops that don't just automatically turn them
into bricks.
Old technology like VCRs and magnetic tape
are bearers of the mixed blessing of being totally
great at kind of working.
Which yes, is awful if all you want to do
is watch "Three Ninjas" or old Star Trek episodes,
but perfect if you're making visuals for the new Nine Inch
Nails side project.
Which is maybe another part of why
glitchy media is so interesting, it's unpredictable.
Those old weird defects that send
you or me at least careening back to childhood
aren't the same on every VCR.
Furthermore, there's no such thing
as complete control over a broken piece of technology.
It's just going to kind of do what it wants.
Glitch media subverts your expectations.
It's like na, expectations, I got other plans.
[SCREAMING]
Even music like Squarepusher or The Glitch Mob,
which is studiously and painstakingly assembled
to get that certain, as the French might say,
glitchy sais quoi, is about the fun of the unexpected.
You might think a song or video works in one way,
but when it's broken it can work whatever way it wants,
thank you very much.
So much glitchy media establishes
a creative authority separate from that of the author.
Even when the busted brokeness is the direct result of actions
taken by a human, the machine still gets
a parts of the action, gets to express something of itself.
It's not just a human wielding a machine to make something,
It's the two together in a kind of cyborg wish fulfillment
scenario.
And the more glitchy, the more broken looking,
the more it feels like you're just
looking underneath the hood of some machinic process.
Like it's easy to get the sense that some Autechre tracks
or Phillip Stearns images weren't made by people,
but by machines themselves.
And when creators push really hard
there can be a strange satisfaction
in seeing the machine struggle in not working
with it, but in asking it to do something
that it really wasn't meant to.
Less of a collaboration really and more of a lover's quarrel.
And increasingly, this is becoming
just as true for painting and sculpture and even dance
as it is for videos and music and other digital works.
For example, this wooden cabinet by Ferruccia Laviani
actually looks like this.
Like if you were in a room with it,
this is what it would look like.
Say what?
We'll just give you a moment to rub your eyes.
You could argue that it has long been the way of the art world
to use what looks like a mistake-- this woman has two
faces, someone left this bicycle wheel here,
you forgot to paint your canvas, bro, these performers
aren't moving-- to explore unknown territory.
Technology provides a whole new vocabulary
and set of processes for what a big quote fingers
"mistake" might look like.
In the way we have a photo realistic paintings
and painterly sculpture or music and even lyrical dance,
we can now have down res'd portraits or glitchy friezes.
You could call this the application
of digital materiality to material materiality.
Insofar as materiality provides capabilities
that afford or constrain actions--
video footnote-- these crazy glitchy meat space
artworks certainly transport the capabilities and constraints
of the digital world into the tangible stuff filled one.
Old blurry video, sharp edges, blown
out colors, wavy contours, pixels
the size of saltine crackers, and grain
on fuzz on noise on grain, the failings and shortcomings
of technology are harnessed by artists,
where in their natural habitat they would make us go oh,
really?
But here we are maybe giving in like yes, VCR from 1994,
you were right, that looks cool.
These things are better as art works anyways because they
are a little broken.
And now we've seen that even things which cannot be broken
or glitched the way electronics can could benefit in some way
from an attempt.
Like what happens when you treat a sculpture
like it's a 3D model?
Or a painting like it's a jpeg?
Or a text file like it's music?
It's kind of like a ballet of mistakes,
a choreographed multidisciplinary
arrangement of desirable shortcomings
trying to make the unbroken better through breaking it.
Which actually makes me wonder, could we make "Broken Arrow"
better by breaking it more?
Good god.
What do you guys think?
In what situation is a broken thing better?
Let us know in the comments.
And if you don't subscribe I will be all broken up.
Womp, womp.
How did to BMO get so pregnant?
Let's see what you guys had to say about BMO and third way
feminism.
[GROANING]
masterYoshimistu says that BMO is not
expressing feminism, but rather just aping humanity in a way.
Which is interesting, but also remember
that the characters around her refer
to her as both he and she.
So whether or not she self identifies in any way,
a gender is communicated towards her, which in and of itself
I think is interesting.
Hahehr makes a really great comparison
between BMO's childlike nature and the kind
of fluid gender of Victorian era children, which
is yeah, really great.
infernothehedgehog3 wonders whether or BMO
is expressive of feminism because they
feel as though feminism is oriented entirely
towards women, whereas the problems that we discuss
in the episode affect both women and men equally.
Claire Martinez answers this question indirectly
and goes on to have a really great conversation
with the voice of JJP.
If you can find it, you can check it out.
On a related language note, TargetZeroOne
points out some of the structural problems
with language and that it's hard to refer to someone who
has a fluid gender and suggests that maybe the new gender fluid
pronoun could be BMO.
To DAMorrison, I'm happy to hear that.
Sometimes that's kind of the point.
Evvan Burke lists for us some of the really great
characteristics of the "Adventure Time" gender swap.
So we'll just pause here for a second so you can read these.
Some of these are really, really great
and didn't even occur to me before.
Amongst other great points, Neth Dugan
points out that there was a linguistic oversight
in last week's episode and that the term "gender queer"
was sorely missed.
Platy News and a couple other people
pointed out that we should not have
used Brandon Teena as an example of a woman of all genders.
Yeah, that was a big oversight on our part,
so double apologies for that one.
And finally, my good friend Steve calling it like it is.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these dedicated individuals
and the Tweet of the week comes from HemoGoblin who points us
towards a project seeking to build-- I'm not lying--
the Starship Enterprise.
What?
And also if you haven't, you should come and join us
on the Idea Channel IRC.
It is a great time.
We'll put a link in the description
if you're interested in that.