IM
perfect Designing
The regeneration of perfection
Haris Ioannou
Glitch art has become a popular topic in recent years as people try to discover new and innovative ways of designing. But what are glitches? How do they perform digitally and physically? How do planned malfunctions contrast with accidental ones? These are things that need to be investigated through experimentation and through the philosophy of user interaction. In this way we can see a negative, which is what a glitch is considered to be, in a positive way. We can turn something considered ugly into a work of art.
CO
2
NT
EN
TS
INSPIRATION
6
DEV
ELO
PME
NT
EXPERIMENTATION
16 WH
AT ’S
NE
XT
?
18
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: INSPIRATION
Tim Knowles
Artist Tim Knowles is the mastermind and creative genius behind these prints made by trees. He is responsible for setting up the 'conditions' for the work (preparing the canvas and attaching markers to the branches) but the rest is left to wind and the trees. Very random, a little connect-the-dots meets Jackson Pollock and truly unique work.
2
http://www.doubletakesblog.com/2009/02/tree-drawings-tim-knowles.html
Sophie Kahn
Long fascinated with capturing the human form in action, Kahn – a New York-based sculptor/mixed media artist – uses 3D laser scans, 3D printers, and ancient bronze casting techniques to create sculptures that “resemble de-constructed monuments or memorials.
They engage questions of time, history, vision, identity and the body.” Kahn uses captures of heads, torsos and more…”The 3D scanning technology I use was never designed to capture the body, which is always in motion. When confronted with a moving body, it receives conflicting spatial coordinates, generating fragmented results: a 3D ‘motion blur’.” From these scans, Kahn creates videos or 3D printed molds for metal or clay sculptures. “The resulting objects bear the artefacts of all the digital processes they have been though.”
http://blog.soliant.com/healthcare-it/technology/9-people-who-have-turned-medical-imaging-into-art/
3
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: INSPIRATION
Faig Ahmed
Artist Faig Ahmed is no stranger to fiber arts. Most of his works revolve around the construction and deconstruction of intricately patterned rugs and carpets. This three-dimensional installation straightforwardly titled Thread Installation deals with this similar concept of visualizing the breakdown of a complex design. Using the rectangular body of a typically Middle Eastern rug, Ahmed forms the contours of geometric patterns with thread, but two corners of the frame are left incomplete. These unfinished edges extend, in long pieces of thread, past the confines of the wall the rest of the work is affixed to as though the conceptual rug is unravelling. Or, perhaps, we've caught a still moment just as the structure is being woven right before our very eyes.
4
http://www.faigahmed.com/news/news-5/
David Penny
David Penny is interested in making work from objects that are considered overlooked, unwanted and useless.
http://www.davidpenny.info/?page_id=14
He controls the significance of the objects through photographing them. Penny is interested to mask the unimportance of the object which becomes like a game for him.
5
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: EXPERIMENTATION
Diagram
Glitch ACCIDENTAL USER EXPERIENCE (FACEBOOK PAGE) PURPOSED
PAPER TRAIL
IMAGE DECONSTRUCTION PROGRAM
PHYSICAL PAPER TRAIL
DIGITAL EMBROIDERY
BROKEN GLASS
DIGITAL This diagram shows the separation of glitches into purposed and accidental ones. There are also two arrows which show how digital glitches were brought into physical form and physical glitches that were transformed into a digital form.
6
Through this diagram we can see the way the work has been divided and developed.
Dice Game Serendipity often plays a large part in how and why unexpected glitches are formed. A game was developed by two University students which played a role in the development of my project. This contact with other students helped in the continuation and cultivation of some aspects of my project. The game involved serendipity and this connects with the idea behind glitches as many errors are formed by chance.
The game is separated into four sections: Word, Draw, Act and Sculpt. We presented images of our work and began the game. A dice was thrown and a random card was drawn. For the word card, the other players in the game had to describe my image of a piece of glass in one word. Someone described it as ‘Sunrise’. For the Draw card, we had to draw a picture inspired by the images. For the Act card, we had to make a movement to show what we thought the image represented. My image inspired ballet movements from one of the players. For the Sculpt section, someone ripped up a piece of white paper and put it back together. Another person created a 3D object with paper and red wool inspired from a reflection of a glass piece. This interaction between the players was insightful into how glitches can be connected with movement and how the destruction and reconstruction of an object can be considered a glitch. 7
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: EXPERIMENTATION
Re-designing Faults
A glitch is something undesirable. It is often considered a fault and just as refuse is discarded because it is considered useless, so glitches are unwelcome. But something unwanted can become a work of art with meaning and soul. An old boy scout book described as ‘poor condition’, for example, can be analysed to discover the character of the previous owner. On first view, it is just a tattered book with scribbles but when we look at it closely we discover something more. The cover image had a boy looking at himself in the mirror. This image has been drawn, with a beard and hair added to the boy in blue and black pen. It brought to mind a picture of a young boy trying to imagine himself in the future and how he will look when he grow up to be a man.
8
Psychotherapist and colour researcher Max Luscherstates indicates that the colour of the pen used in drawings reflects the personality of the artist. The use of a dark blue pen proposes self analysis and attention to inner problems where as the colour black that is scribbled on top, reveals melancholy and a desire to change. This implies that the user was a boy rushing to grow up or a boy going through the teenage period passing through a phase where he is not a boy but neither a man. This changed the value of the book from worthless to precious as it contained the spirit of the previous owner.
The University workshop bins were a good source of waste. The objects were broken and discarded and some so small they were almost unnoticeable. The photographic process revealed something magical. The reflections made by the glass when photographed, evoked a variety of emotions. Depending on the background surface, some images were playful and some mystical. The sharpness of the glass was harsh but when put together with other material such as wool, the glass lost its dangerous quality. The creation of a cage around the glass gave the impression of protectiveness which reflected the need in me to protect these discarded objects.
The connection between moving pictures and sound was an area of exploration. When a machine is unable to recognise the code of a moving image, the sound seems like a glitch. The coupling of the sound and image transforms the procedure and the result is truly unique. Expanding on the concept of unintended mistakes and redesign, a broken wooden clip was the inspiration of this idea. The metallic pieces look like scribbled writing and this piece had a look of a grasshopper. Once again, a broken item is taken advantage of to recreate innovative results.
9
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: EXPERIMENTATION
Photo Booth Glitches
The Photo Booth application on MacBook gives the option to take pictures with different backgrounds such as the seaside. When there is too much movement, the application does not recognize the picture so it creates faulty images. When the images of the glass were added the application crashed and this created unexpected results.
The outcome made the photograph unrecognizable but the motion in the picture is now visible. The process of the application trying to reconstruct the picture is also evident. 10
Tracing Accidents
Chance and accidents influence the structure of a glitch. An experiment created to test this theory was the ‘Paper trail’. Sheets of white paper were left on the ground in a busy street in Manchester. Some sheets were lost and the remaining ones were wet and covered with shoe marks where people had unknowingly trodden on them.
The bustle of the street is reflected in the outcome and that is why I decided to multiply the prints in order to represent what was happening at the time. This is a physical glitch taken into a digital version. This unnoticeable piece of paper was acting as a piece of art. Through tracing it in Illustrator I felt that the strangers were brought together through their footsteps and they were participants in the final result.
11
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: EXPERIMENTATION
12
Facebook Group
A Facebook group called ‘Glitch’ was created so people could post their experiences with both digital and physical malfunctions. There was a great response to this group. Some video glitches reveal movement when two different images are overlapping. Other people chose to post damaged objects that are not useful anymore. There was one person who decided to hang her melted spatula on her wall as a work of art and she called it the ‘wall of shame’.
This group gathered observations and experiences of accidental glitches. The concept was successful and it created interest and conversation between the group members.It was enlightening to see how people considered broken objects as glittches.
13
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: EXPERIMENTATION
14
Digital Image Deconstruction
Through my collaboration with the computer programmer Michael Michaelides, we created a program that takes the coding of the images and scrambles it so that the image is deconstructed and reconstructed randomly. This randomness makes the images unique, as it is impossible for the same mistake to happen twice. It is possible to see the creative process behind the image which was not possible before this intentional glitch procedure.
15
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: DEVELOPMENT
Digital Embroidery
The process of taking a digital glitch and making it physical was made possible by the technique of embroidery. The results were not as expected as there were imperfect threads going through the work. The machine read the image but when it transferred it to the embroidery fabric, it left empty spaces as well as stray threads that looked like lines all over the piece.
The computer recognised the image as pixels but the embroidery machine recognised it as lines. Thus the translation from the image embroidery is unpredictable.
16
17
DESIGNING IMPERFECTION: WHAT’S NEXT?
Interactive Exhibition
Through this project, I have come to realise that there is a philosophy of user interaction with technology and this brings them into contact with glitches. The way people relate to glitches depends on how these glitches are perceived. I am looking at ways glitches can be translated so that people can recognise them and accept them. If we can change the way glitches are seen and understood then maybe we can change their value from something useless to something of importance. The connection of image and sound is an important connection and a way of making glitches more understandable.
18
I would like to develop embroidery pieces and to put their coding through a sound translator to connect the pieces together. I would also like to do this with videos of moving object to compare the results. As part of the concept of user interaction, I would like to create an installation where people can throw objects at a large white canvas so that they can experience the creation of a glitch. The resulting outcome will be unpredictable and unique. It will be a creation of a work of art. I will ask them to describe in one word how they felt about this experience. I will create a book to curate my results and experimentation.