Imperfect Designing
HARIS IOANNOU
What is ‘Glitch’ art? Could we create artwork out of our faulty technological gadgets? Through this magazine that displays my research, I present my inspirations and my experimentation processes that lead me to what I want to do next. Taking advantage of flaws and combining the physical and the digital were the main focuses for this project.
Primary Research
4 Inspiration
8
Experimentation
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What’s Next?
what’s inside...
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION PRIMARY RESEARCH
Fake Nature: Deliver us from Prosthetic Nature http://www.nextnature.net/themes/fake-nature/
Fake nature is a replica of old nature. Where ‘authentic’ nature is organic, genetic, and alive, fake nature is not. It projects the illusion of life, be it plant or animal, on man-made and inanimate objects. Yet fake nature is not a dull, devalued shadow of living nature. It is rich in cultural associations that grow, morph, and interact with society and the natural environment. Phone antenna trees grow alongside real pines, dioramas are carefully studied, and the mountains themselves are under girded with steel.
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“Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible.” — Jean Baudrillard
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION PRIMARY RESEARCH
3D: printing the future The inspiring exhibition at the Science Museum in London displays a range of 3D printed objects such as guns, body parts and everyday items. The fact that it analyses the progress and explains how a 3D printer works, attracts the public to view the exhibition. The display also presents an opportunity for the public to express their opinions:
‘Regulation is essential. It’s in every other part of our lives and 3D printing should be no exception.’ Gabi
From other quotes around the Museum, people revealed 3D printers will make their lives easier and that they foresee that they will not be able to live without them, as they will be able to have everything that they need at home. It was clear that nobody thought about the closing factories and future unemployment after this new technological revolution. We assume technology is perfect but through a small glitch it can disappoint us. But should we be disappointed? This glitch might lead to a unique result that we have never seen before.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION PRIMARY RESEARCH
Salad in the sky: The rise of the vertical farm?
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/the-big-story/salad-in-the-sky-the-rise-of-the-vertical-farm/1014844.article
Could vertical farming offer a solution to one of mankind’s most pressing problems? 6
It is an unlikely site for a revolution: more likely, you would think, to be noted for its collection of Cuban crocodiles than its cameo at the birth of a potentially worldchanging industry. But for the past three years, Paignton zoo in Devon has been growing food for its animals using a Verticrop greenhouse, one of the world’s first working examples of a vertical farm, a radical new approach to agriculture that many believe could address one of humanity’s most pressing problems: feeding our rapidly growing population.
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION PRIMARY RESEARCH
Supertree Park in Singapore Singapore just opened a new park full of Supertrees: Gardens by the Bay.
They call it a ‘horticultural heaven’ and they probably right, there are gardens, parks, plants, bridges and awesome skywalks. The other eye catchers are the two Biodomes ‘Flower dome’ and the ‘Cloud Forest’. The Domes are intended to be an energy efficient showcase of sustainable building technologies and to provide an all-weather space within the Gardens. Be sure to check it out when you are in Singapore..
http://www.wherecoolthingshappen.com/supertree-park-in-singapore/
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION INSPIRATION
portrait (African woman), 2011 oil on corduroy, 95x65 cm
Jens Hesse Jens Hesse’s paintings inspired by distorted digital satellite signals and datamosed videos. Hesse hails from Heessen, Germany and now resides and works in Antwerp where his oil paintings on corduroy and canvas depict varied images that drip curiosity as you try to adjust your vision to clearly make out the gooey, photo-esque images – gorgeous!
http://artoutthere.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/jens-hesse.html
"Pope 2" 40 x 50cm oil on corduroy 2010 8
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION INSPIRATION
Jon Satrom
Jon Satrom is a Chicago-based dirty-new-media artist/organiser, who spends his days fixing things, making things work and educating. He spends his evenings breaking things, learning and searching for the unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits. With a background in video, sound and new-media, Satrom strings together a collection of home-brew systems for production and play including video games, renegade computer scripts, abandonware, necroware, artware and corrupt data.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION INSPIRATION
Dripping birds by Maurizio Bongiovanni. Inspiration board composed of Maurizio Bongiovanni’s paintings and the designs of Ann Demeulemeester, Altuzarra, Prabal Gurung, Stephane Rolland. The designs featured here are just examples of possible inspirations, and don’t have a straight reference to these paintings.
http://modenodeblog.com/2013/01/08/dripping-birds-by-maurizio-bongiovanni/
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION INSPIRATION
Sebastian Schmieg
in collaboration with artist Silvio Lorusso.
Last Thursday, Amazon unveiled their new line of Kindles and the internet was soon awash in Kindle-porn as the tech blogs promptly commenced their collective drooling. While the jury is still out on whether you really need that new Kindle Paperwhite or Kindle Fire HD when you hardly ever use your existing one, one reason to consider making the switch is all the fun ways you can creatively destroy your old device. Any digital product, such as the Kindle, is prone to errors and failures, many of which can yield surprisingly beautiful, if accidental, results. Reveling in these “aesthetics of failure” is what glitch art is all about, and apparently several artists have already found ample fodder for inspiration in the humble Kindle. Berlin-based artist Sebastian Schmieg released a print-on-demand art book called 56 Broken Kindle Screens in collaboration with artist Silvio Lorusso. On his site he writes,
“The book takes as its starting point the peculiar aesthetic of broken E-Ink displays and serves as an examination into the reading device’s materiality. As the screens break, they become collages composed of different pages, cover illustrations and interface elements.” Meanwhile, over in Ireland, French-born artist Benjamin Gaulon aka RECYCLISM will literally take your old Kindles off your hands for his KindleGlitched series. These readymades, exploring “the aesthetics of planned obsolescence” are glitchy found, bought, or donated Kindles that Gaulon has hacked to generate unique and permanent visuals. Each one comes signed by the artist.
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/what-to-do-with-that-old-kindle-how-about-some-kindle-glitch-art
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION INSPIRATION
Anish Kapoor Hexagonal Mirror
Anish Kapoor is one of the most influential sculptors of his generation. Perhaps most famous for public sculptures that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering, he manoeuvres between vastly different scales, across numerous series of work. Immense PVC skins, stretched or deflated; concave or convex mirrors whose reflections attract and swallow the viewer; recesses carved in stone and pigmented so as to disappear: these voids and protrusions summon up deep-felt metaphysical polarities of presence and absence, concealment and revelation. Forms turn themselves inside out, womb-like, and materials are not painted but impregnated with colour, as if to negate the idea of an outer surface, inviting the viewer to the inner reaches of the imagination.
http://www.lissongallery.com/artists/anish-kapoor
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION INSPIRATION
Mellanie Willhide
Photographer Thankful to Laptop Thief for New Creative Direction
http://petapixel.com/2013/04/23/photographer-thankful-to-laptop-thief-for-new-creative-direction/
Having your laptop and photographs stolen usually isn’t a good thing, but for photographer Melanie Willhide, it actually helped her career move forward. David Rosenberg of Slate reports that Willhide, a fine art photographer based in Los Angeles, had her laptop and backup drive stolen. After giving up hope that she would ever see her images again, she received a happy surprise when the police department called to inform her that her computer had been found through a traffic stop. When she got her computer back, there was another letdown: the thief had wiped her data and had been using the computer as his own. In an attempt to recover anything she could, Willhide decided to use recovery software on the hard drive.
As the recovered images started appearing on the screen, it was clear that there had been damage done to them by data corruption. However, Willhide didn’t complain — she was actually pleased with what had happened to the photos. So please, in fact, that she turned the “glitch art” photographs into a series titled To Adrian Rodriguez, With Love (warning: a few of the images in the series are NSFW). The project is a tribute to Adrian Rodriguez, the laptop thief. In addition to refining the photos that were “glitched by the thief,” Willhide also taught herself how to artificially glitch photos with the same aesthetic using Photoshop
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION EXPERIMENTATION
Reflections on foil & Wrapping paper Photographic glitches can be replicated with reflections on different metallic materials such as foil and silver wrapping paper. The result of a reflection of foil is more blurred but when its crumbled it looks like a work of art as the colors are bolder. On the other hand the silver wrapping paper is very reflective and it can be mistaken for a faulty computer screen. It cuts the reflection in pieces and it makes it distorted but on the other hand uniquely beautiful. The two materials are playful ideas to experiment with and a straightforward but inventive idea to create purposed glitches without technology.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION EXPERIMENTATION
Glitched Letterforms The idea for the distorted letter ‘A’ came accidentally after the reflection experiments. Looking at the images of the wrapping paper, as they were successful, the letterform concept followed next. Through the reflections, the letter changed dramatically in each picture, creating an illusion of movement and changing shapes. By tracing the letter variations through illustrator, the outline became clearer but the images have more expression through the colors.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION EXPERIMENTATION
Reflections: saucepan & spoon The reflections on aluminum objects distorted the images and twirled them. The saucepan made the reflection longer and the room more spacious whereas the spoon made it look spherical, deforming it. The forms that are created after processing the images with the pen tool on illustrator, form figures and shapes that reminiscent works of the famous artist Picasso.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION EXPERIMENTATION
Google Earth The three dimensional graphics of Google Earth which are not perfect, make the application distinctive. The images are placed one on top of the other to emphasize the glitches. Google Earth is an application that we use in our everyday lives and we are used to that virtual unperfected reality. It is often criticized for being glitched but just like the ancient cartographers who drew exquisite maps; Google Earth offers some beautiful images of the world around us.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION EXPERIMENTATION
Skype Glitches
Taking advantage of Skype calls with people with low Internet connection, I was able to obtain faulty images that were pixelated. For a Skype user, this would be considered as something of a problem but when you see it as a work of art you can regard it as an advantage. A still image usually does not show movement but a glitch image captures it making it look like motion is present. It might not be clear but it makes people speculate what is hidden behind it.
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This research idea confused the Skype users who participated and they kept asking why a faulty Skype connection would be interesting. However when they viewed the images of themselves they were amazed as they found them unique. They could see the concept of how you can take problematic and turn it into something striking.
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION EXPERIMENTATION
Accidental Faults: YouTube We sometimes have the accidental glitches, where we cannot do anything about them. We got used to seeing them on YouTube videos if our Internet is slow. This is where these amazing print screen images came from, of a motor biker driving and turning his head to look back. The movement is caught and the liquidity of the second image looks like a canvas painting.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION EXPERIMENTATION
Poster Design
Designing a poster was a big challenge, as it is not easy to take a research portfolio and display it in just one image. Starting with key words, I edited an image that was taken a few months ago by myself, of a building in Cyprus, which is inspired by pixels. By developing this idea on Photoshop, I realized that it would not be possible to make a poster presentation of so much research when you already have a powerful image as a background. It would look better as a cover of magazines if those words were eliminated. Starting with a whole new concept, the landscape layout looked perfect to display all the research as it looked like a timeline that separated all the investigation stages.
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DESIGNING IMPERFECTION WHAT’S NEXT?
Faulty Photography
These photographs came from a personal album collection. They were hidden in the back of a draw as they were considered as faulty but when you view them through an eye of an artist and consider the colour and uniqueness of each picture, they have their own vibrancy.
Taking this project to the next step, I would like to take pictures and videos with glitch cameras and display them through posters, large canvasses and videos. I would like to develop these images in a small magazine displaying how people think and feel by viewing them, with comments and drawings. I would like to compare the accidental glitch with the glitch created on purpose. Also I would like to examine natural glitches in comparison to technological glitches. By taking advantage of defective cameras I will take random pictures in order to view the unpredictable results. By damaging the films or the cameras on purpose the pictures will we considered purposed faults. The interesting part will be when I connect the together, will people be able to distinguish which ones are accidental and which ones are on purpose.
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