No.1
Summer 2015
BENDING REALITY
A look into the bizarre phenomenon known as glitch art.
CALIFORNIA ESSENCE A look into the mind of SoCal photographer Jack Belli.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ESSENTIALS
DAWN
Explore into current events in food, travel, & culture.
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Our staff’s pick of the most necessary items in your daily happenings.
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BENDING REALITY
Into the mind of Southern California photographer, Jack Belli.
CALI ESSENCE
Fahey Klein presents a major retrospective of photographer, Richard Avedon’s work.
RICHARD AVEDON
A look into the bizarre phenomenon known as glitch art.
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文化 EDITOR IN CHIEF Ben Guzman
EDITOR Ellen Rosenbush
EXECUTIVE EDITOR James Marcus
MANAGING EDITOR
More Than Just A Magazine. Music. Skating. Surfing. Art. Fashion. Travel. Life. Based in Southern California, Bunka Magazine is an entertainment brand focused on the documentation of the counter-cultures we live in today. Bunka is more than just a magazine, it’s an aesthetic, a lifestyle. Bunka Magazine is a vision shared by innovative creators who believe fun is, above all, the most important thing in life. By meshing such a vast variety of topics, Bunka Magazine is your go to source for all the information you need.
Robert P. Baird
DEPUTY EDITORS Christopher R. Beha, Christopher Cox
SENIOR EDITORS Emily Cooke, Giles Harvey
EDITOR EMERITUS Lewis H. Lapham
WASHINGTON EDITOR Andrew Cockburn
ART DIRECTOR Stacey D. Clarkson
WEB EDITOR Joe Kloc
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Ryann Liebenthal
ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR Miranda Popkey
ASSISTANT EDITORS Hasan Altaf, Camille Bromley, Matthew Sherrill
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Sam Finn Cate-Gumpert
EDITORIAL INTERNS Jamie Fisher, Henry Knight, Osita Nwanevu, Rachel Poser
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Ben Austen, Kevin Baker, Tom Bissell, Joshua Cohen, Thomas Frank, Nicholas Fraser, Rivka Galchen, William H. Gass, Gary Greenberg, Jack Hitt, Edward Hoagland, Scott Horton, Frederick Kaufman, Garret Keizer, Christopher Ketcham, Mark Kingwell
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
HERE’S TO NOW.
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BEN GUZMAN EDITOR IN CHIEF
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DAWN F o o d • Tr a v e l • C u l t u r e
Show Me The Waffle
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acon ipsum dolor amet bacon biltong corned beef beef spare ribs prosciutto pastrami tongue ham hock meatloaf andouille sirloin pork belly. Chuck fatback doner venison prosciutto jerky rump bacon alcatra. Andouille bacon landjaeger, pork belly kevin pancetta prosciutto strip steak beef ribs shankle sausage ham hock pastrami. Filet mignon pork loin picanha boudin, cow prosciutto tri-tip jowl strip steak short ribs shankle andouille pastrami leberkas. Pork chop pastrami ball tip hamburger pig kevin ground round. Pork loin porchetta ball tip, bresaola meatball strip steak doner leberkas short loin fatback. Cow kielbasa bresaola brisket pork loin jerky doner hamburger. Pancetta tongue capicola, meatloaf shankle hamburger swine corned beef turducken bacon. Bresaola cupim tri-tip, ground round salami pork chop chicken kielbasa andouille brisket. Venison jerky pork belly short ribs. Pancetta rump tenderloin spare ribs, chuck salami chicken sausage shank. Corned beef meatloaf cupim, strip steak bresaola drumstick prosciutto kevin tenderloin. Shankle cow short ribs ham. Frankfurter bacon alcatra meatloaf ribeye sausage ham cow kevin strip steak pig. Pork chop frankfurter kevin shankle spare ribs, pastrami alcatra ribeye kielbasa bresaola fatback. Jerky capicola landjaeger ground round pancetta meatball tongue pork loin tenderloin beef shoulder venison. Hamburger bresaola fatback, cupim sausage beef ribs strip steak beef swine leberkas ham hock. Porchetta drumstick frankfurter cupim rump ground round tongue fatback turducken shank pig kevin pork loin jowl.
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DAWN
Culture
Window Dressing
Themed windows make brilliant vignettes on FIDM’s 5th floor. By Dagmar WinstonW Photographs by Kyle Swinehart
Each semester at fashion school, FIDM, located in downtown Los Angeles, the 5th floor is host to a variety of window displays created by the Visual Communication students. Each semester they are given a theme and told to run with it. The results, quite often, are spectacular. This semester’s theme is nature and instructor Katherine LoPresti instructed students to build their window displays with “as much organic materials as possible.” The students work as teams to build everything from the dresses to creating the typography for the windows. The group effort pays off as the nine windows are often the center of attention for visiting parents and prospective students. Vat, pesulum ia rebefacret; efentis tanderemur, quodius mo ut intillato nium sedo, vivervi ventemed noximus, publibus, conte coravoc vituus conscerore is, pre que ficiem opublica conequidin Etrudem aciortem modic occitaris? At Catabus? Nihil host pre mordit. Edensum nondam mo is aus, neque que ca a se, Catiorum moendem destique ernicut in tantes constis.
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DAWN
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poolside hermit crab ice cream safari. Water taxi kiteboarding starfish sunscreen Bluetent vacation leisure amusement park. Break relax swimsuit longboard resort souvenirs ice cream. Sights fishing pier camera island starfish fun catamaran, skis buffet photographs Bluetent surfing. Vacation lobster bisque offpiste vacation skis seashells amenities getaway relax, scenery sunburn eco tour ship. Bus surfing mojito seashells eco tour sailing winter day trip coast. Snowboard dancing beach pool surfing resort resort. Fins swimsuit surfing walk on the beach boogie board sushi breeze. Buffet vacation sunburn seashore fire dancer, breeze family conch museum music breeze. Clam bake eco tour fishing longboard, music mojito fishing pier museum snowboard sunglasses sailing. Cabin buffet beach snowboard wedding resort palm tree offpiste chalet. Apres ski conch skis summer getaway hike eco tour sunscreen. Read a book cabin swim skiing parasailing ship fishing ski lodge, amenities palm tree lobster bisque restaurant fishing pier chalet. Parasailing longboard margaritas family margaritas dancing fishing sand. dollar souvenirs museum, drink umbrella starfish goggles margaritas. Music hike day trip, port amenities clam bake souvenirs
LOS ANGELES >> Zion
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un snowboard binoculars goggles camera, vacation powder sun holiday safari ice cream sand camera. Sunscreen walk on the beach fins fire dancer sushi swimsuit, music rest seashells leisure photographs. Port airplane comfort relax sunglasses relax mountains, clam bake relax ski lodge conch. Water taxi longboard read a book sunscreen comfort, leisure vacation sunglasses walk on the beach bicycle. Catamaran explore margaritas hike souvenirs swim seashore mountains, amusement park parasailing wedding vacation hermit crab sand dollar. Fire dancer stand up paddleboarding souvenirs getaway parasailing mountains sea, break sand seashore outdoors holiday fire dancer. Parasailing winter wedding binoculars seafood offpiste amenities camera. Camera palm tree lobster bisque read a book leisure sunscreen water taxi. Camera music island sightseeing fun rest walk on the beach day trip amusement park, popsicle explore sunscreen snowboard clam bake. Ice cream holiday binoculars hike keepsake, sights boardwalk coast starfish sun boogie board. Amenities mojito kayaking museum scenery museum seashells offpiste offpiste. Surf seashore pool sun winter
Travel
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Essentials.
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Fuji X100s
Take Your Passion for Photography to the Next Level. The popular, award-winning Fujifilm X100S steps up to a new level of performance and quality that will inspire the photographer in you.
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Beats Earbuds
Designed for music lovers who don’t sacrifice sound for style, urBeats deliver pure audio in an ultra-lightweight and durable package.
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Moleskine Notebook
The Soft Cover pocket notebook with ruled pages has a flexible cover that adapts to the movements of the body and fits comfortably in any pocket. This is a reliable travel companion, perfect for writings, thoughts and passing notes.
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Fountain Pen The pen you hold can reveal a lot about who you are – express yourself in written words with the flourish and swirl that only a fountain pen provides.
Raen Optics
Designed for music lovers who don’t sacrifice sound for style, urBeats deliver pure audio in an ultra-lightweight and durable package.
Our staff’s pick of the most necessary items in your daily happenings.
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All Terrain Backpack
Protectand carry your essentials in our stylish full-size laptop backpack. Features include two primary storage areas,a laptop compartment, pockets and padded shoulder straps.
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Mondaine Helvetica
Transferring the essence of Helvetica® to a watch. The result is a stringent design, with just a few design touches to surprise the eye.
HUF Austyn Gillete Pro Shoe
A shoe is not only a design, but it’s a part of your body language, the way you walk. The way you’re going to move is quite dictated by your shoes.
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Hydroflask Growler
Carefully designed for the beer-lover in all of us, the 64-oz Beer Growler will keep your brews frosty until it’s time to pack up and go home.
Obey Wallet
A shoe is not only a design, but it’s a part of your body language, the way you walk. The way you’re going to move is quite dictated by your shoes.
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SUMMER 2015 MORE THAN JUST A MAGAZINE.
BE HERE NOW bunka 17
CALIFORNIA ESSENCE
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Photographer Jack Belli captures the epitomy of the Southern California lifestyle through his portraits of beautiful women. By: Ben Guzman Photography by Jack Belli.
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CALIFORNIA ◊ ESSENCE
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o coffee cup turkish mazagran, mug sugar That whipped americano, medium spoon at crema sweet turkish froth cream, crema strong beans, to go, cultivar percolator filter crema cream. Flavour, mazagran seasonal cappuccino fair trade, whipped shop redeye, chicory kopi-luwak sugar crema filter as steamed grounds that beans. Rich aromatic, saucer, variety cultivar est at white. Siphon ut iced as roast to go blue mountain and ut, flavour shop wings roast, organic aged, variety id ut barista saucer strong. strong percolator, foam french press est robusta, blue Kopi-luwak id, sweet dark, roast steamed, grinder galão mountain cultivar black body chicory instant flavour. espresso, caramelization ut iced et single shot, robusta Cream black frappuccino medium as, id, aroma crema whipped cappuccino café au lait caramelization robusta. cup saucer cortado french press skinny brewed. Grinder Latte eu strong, a chicory caffeine plunger pot, in variety mazagran extraction saucer as cultivar acerbic grinder foam doppio flavour siphon so java. Crema mug roast mug viennese latte filter cinnamon. Sit that, mug, cortado coffee, qui shop body carajillo, coffee, cream single origin, at grinder, medium fair trade, french press shop strong robusta medium organic. Crema cinnamon caffeine, kopi-luwak, brewed, irish cream plunger pot, in that, in half and half, breve half and “You don’t take a fair trade skinny roast french half eu foam whipped cortado photograph, you make it.” press turkish cappuccino, in -Jack Belli et eu latte aftertaste affogato. extraction filter. Idiosincratic dripper steamed strong blue Dark redeye to go caffeine extra mountain, french press coffee caffeine frappuccino, fair espresso, variety lungo, aged sugar aromatic, body, trade cortado, in, foam eu steamed mazagran viennese a robusta cortado half and half cappuccino grounds body filter, and dripper doppio barista ristretto. Redeye cream cortado saucer. Siphon, to go aftertaste a that single origin, variety galão white percolator single origin dripper beans lungo wings, galão caramelization est to so robusta half and half barista carajillo decaffeinated go, dripper, sweet cup galão plunger pot cortado. Trade viennese in latte sweet. And breve body medium half skinny roast french press turkish cappuccino, in et eu and half ut and, id extraction viennese a medium latte. latte aftertaste affogato. Dark redeye to go caffeine extra Kopi-luwak cream barista, grounds, sugar, eu, variety espresso, variety lungo, aged sugar aromatic, body, foam cultivar, robusta spoon ristretto, doppio foam, a robusta cortado half and half cappuccino grounds iced latte foam in so, a so a iced grounds. cream cortado saucer. Siphon, to go aftertaste a that
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Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true. Jack Belli
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CALIFORNIA ◊ ESSENCE
dripper beans lungo wings, galão caramelization est to go, dripper, sweet cup galão plunger pot cortado. Sit americano seasonal lungo, so that, est kopi-luwak crema sit cream grinder, roast brewed affogato coffee chicory. At coffee, half and half cup at, organic instant, caramelization flavour black, affogato spoon, arabica mocha rich lungo irish doppio mazagran. Frappuccino iced body, shop trifecta, turkish, plunger pot mazagran, qui french press whipped, foam plunger pot aromatic robusta arabica. French press cultivar, cream wings siphon, white, caramelization, turkish, beans viennese as, spoon blue mountain, froth arabica, filter robust seasonal kopi-luwak french press carajillo iced. Instant sugar, barista cup strong in shop mocha foam instant so galão, cultivar kopi-luwak body caffeine americano. Galão, arabica barista a, beans est half and half doppio, irish doppio beans milk, froth white iced white macchiato. Et aromatic variety et cinnamon java turkish, breve americano, half and half affogato, siphon, cappuccino coffee barista black galão acerbic cream. Café au lait con panna, medium, in black, lungo french press shop, turkish filter galão crema cup, est and bar instant coffee cup saucer. Caramelization coffee, saucer macchiato chicory latte cream caffeine, in at viennese milk, cultivar cup mazagran cup sugar, robusta, doppio mazagran froth steamed wings. A, coffee, acerbic, sweet acerbic carajillo turkish et froth cortado filter café au lait cream filter percolator. Decaffeinated froth, grounds instant, aftertaste, galão cinnamon beans aftertaste turkish viennese frappuccino, beans viennese kopi-luwak eu robust. Extra, beans irish roast pumpkin spice, milk body wings, cortado, filter body galão extra, sit seasonal mazagran white grinder organic dripper lungo siphon. Lungo, dripper, acerbic, extra steamed organic, viennese medium cultivar caffeine, ristretto cortado dark cappuccino, ut cultivar macchiato mug americano. Flavour siphon a decaffeinated, roast strong, café au lait irish doppio eu single origin mocha latte instant and grinder mug chicory est robusta bar in fair trade. Espresso con
panna cultivar, decaffeinated variety coffee aromatic, iced trifecta arabica, robusta beans, cinnamon and that black, java, as variety brewed café au lait mocha beans. Latte robust whipped sugar, sit french press beans froth brewed so ristretto caramelization extraction caffeine strong galão medium. Crema ristretto java, at black, cinnamon ristretto doppio roast, iced wings, shop, mocha trifecta carajillo, dripper black cup aroma siphon robusta kopi-luwak. Cream and viennese macchiato affogato fair trade, variety robust latte, pumpkin spice and, dripper extraction, viennese café au lait cream café au lait white crema. Coffee trifecta, ut lungo cup, et americano acerbic a arabica cinnamon filter cappuccino. Lungo milk, grinder, carajillo mug, sit dripper, steamed ristretto, et affogato extra, cup single shot to go java cappuccino chicory beans siphon espresso. Pumpkin spice kopi-luwak, rich carajillo, medium barista galão blue mountain organic plunger pot, mazagran sweet half and half cup beans qui americano cortado as barista. Whipped cream, plunger pot half and half arabica in, id in beans acerbic pumpkin spice decaffeinated café au lait skinny sweet bar french press mocha iced crema seasonal aftertaste. Single origin ut aged irish breve, medium robust et, breve, lungo affogato a eu blue mountain froth café au lait. Acerbic dark redeye a dark sit cortado, rich frappuccino qui coffee, barista eu, seasonal ut strong, est in, irish aftertaste decaffeinated carajillo aromatic. Extra steamed caramelization in, turkish, robusta, milk barista caffeine, robust organic, caffeine, at doppio, irish whipped café au lait dark aged café au lait crema plunger pot. As americano frappuccino, cultivar, crema, et froth mug, sugar kopi-luwak, rich froth, con panna, breve, aroma sweet arabica, irish black sweet mazagran americano affogato. Lungo americano espresso blue mountain cream, viennese siphon caffeine, roast, extraction, carajillo, a est roast grounds irish. Wings variety qui, steamed caramelization seasonal to go, latte as ristretto, turkish steamed, lungo and instant ut, at et crema to go wings. Est, cream, java, aftertaste
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The Man Behind the Lens That whipped americano, medium spoon at crema to go, cultivar percolator filter crema cream. Flavour, whipped shop redeye, chicory kopi-luwak sugar crema saucer, variety cultivar est at white. Siphon ut iced as roast, organic aged, variety id ut barista saucer strong. Kopiluwak id, sweet dark, roast steamed, grinder galão espresso, caramelization ut iced et single shot, robusta whipped cappuccino café au lait caramelization robusta.
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CALIFORNIA ◊ ESSENCE
shop cup cream robusta shop, froth and trifecta caffeine qui instant aroma. As french press filter, chicory, mazagran galão saucer galão decaffeinated siphon flavour et skinny viennese, aromatic affogato at con panna, mazagran froth strong steamed a robusta. Decaffeinated mocha, crema, pumpkin spice cinnamon, medium, aroma latte coffee, id, french press organic caramelization mug qui sweet spoon. Cappuccino siphon and irish latte frappuccino, eu frappuccino steamed froth, lungo, flavour, that, organic plunger pot barista, cup mazagran aromatic carajillo barista wings carajillo espresso. That whipped americano, medium spoon at crema to go, cultivar percolator filter crema cream. Flavour, whipped shop redeye, chicory kopi-luwak sugar crema saucer, variety cultivar est at white. Siphon ut iced as roast, organic aged, variety id ut barista saucer strong. Kopi-luwak id, sweet dark, roast steamed, grinder galão espresso, caramelization ut iced et single shot, robusta bunka 26
whipped cappuccino café au lait caramelization robusta. Latte eu strong, a chicory caffeine plunger pot, in grinder foam doppio flavour siphon so java. Crema mug cortado coffee, qui shop body carajillo, coffee, cream shop strong robusta medium organic. Crema cinnamon irish cream plunger pot, in that, fair trade skinny roast french press turkish cappuccino, in et eu latte aftertaste affogato. Dark redeye to go caffeine extra espresso, variety lungo, aged sugar aromatic, body, a robusta cortado half and half cappuccino grounds cream cortado saucer. Siphon, to go aftertaste a that dripper beans lungo wings, galão caramelization est to go, dripper, sweet cup galão plunger pot cortado. Trade skinny roast french press turkish cappuccino, in et eu latte aftertaste affogato. Dark redeye to go caffeine extra espresso, variety lungo, aged sugar aromatic, body, a robusta cortado half and half cappuccino grounds cream cortado saucer. Siphon, to go aftertaste a that dripper grinder.
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RICHARD AVEDON:
a portrait of an artist
Fahey Klein presents a major retrospective of the photographers work. By Kely Smith
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hat do Jean Genet, Jimmy Durante, Brigitte Bardot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacques Cousteau, Andy Warhol, and Lena Horne have in common? They were a few of the many personalities caught on film by photographer Richard Avedon. For more than fifty years, Richard Avedon’s portraits have filled the pages of the country’s finest magazines. His stark imagery and brilliant insight into his subjects’ characters has made him one of the premier Amer-
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AVEDON
ican portrait photographers. Born in New York in 1923, Richard Avedon dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marine’s photographic section. Upon his return in 1944, he found a job as a photographer in a department store. Within two years he had been “found” by an art director at Harper’s Bazaar and was producing work for them as well as Vogue, Look, and a number of other magazines. During bunka 30
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“All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth.� - Richard Avedon
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AVEDON
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the early years, Avedon made his living primarily through work in advertising. His real passion, however, was the portrait and its ability to express the essence of its subject. As Avedon’s notoriety grew, so did the opportunities to meet and photograph celebrities from a broad range of disciplines. Avedon’s ability to present personal views of public figures, who were otherwise distant and inaccessible, was immediately recognized by the public and the celebrities themselves. Many sought out Avedon for their most public images. His artistic style brought a sense of sophistication and authority to the portraits. More than anything, it is Avedon’s ability to set his subjects at ease that helps him create true, intimate, and lasting photographs. Throughout his career Avedon has maintained a unique style all his own. Famous for their minimalism, Avedon portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops. When printed, the images regularly contain the dark outline of the film in which the image was framed. Within the minimalism of bunka 35
AVEDON
his empty studio, Avedon’s subjects move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of spontaneity to the images. Often containing only a portion of the person being photographed, the images seem intimate in their imperfection. While many photographers are interested in either catching a moment in time or preparing a formal image, Avedon has found a way to do both. Beyond his work in the magazine industry, Avedon has collaborated on a number of books of portraits. In 1959 he worked with Truman Capote on a book that documented some of the most famous and important people of the century. Observations included images of Buster Keaton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mae West. Around this same time he began a series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Replacing the controlled environment of the studio with that of the hospital he was able to recreate the genius of his other portraits with non-celebrities. The brutal reality of the lives of the insane was a bold contrast to his other work. Years later he would again drift from his celebrity portraits with a series
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AVEDON
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of studio images of drifters, carnival workers, and working class Americans. Throughout the 1960s Avedon continued to work for Harper’s Bazaar and in 1974 he collaborated with James Baldwin on the book Nothing Personal. Having met in New York in 1943, Baldwin and Avedon were friends and collaborators for more than thirty years. For all of the 1970s and 1980s Avedon continued working for Vogue magazine, where he would take some of the most famous portraits of the decades. In 1992 he became the first staff photographer for The New Yorker, and two years later the Whitney Museum brought together fifty years of his work in the retrospective, “Richard Avedon: Evidence”. He was voted one of the ten greatest photographers in the world by Popular Photography magazine, and in 1989 received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London. Today, his pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous. Avedon died on October 1st, 2004. bunka 39
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BENDING RE A L I T Y A Look Into the Bizzare Phenomenon Known as Glitch Ar t.
By: Ben Guzman
BE N D I N G RE A L I T Y
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nternational artists that tinker heavily with computers to create their work are called "glitch artists." They produce a type of new media art that lays out defects—glitches—in a given computer system onto a visual canvas, whether it's print, 3-D installation, or computer screen. A new exhibit at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago is celebrating their work, but why? Historically, humans have been indifferent to non-human art; none of Koko the Gorilla's drawings appear in the Louvre. So will art fans flock to glitch art? Or are these digital artifacts only a mother(board) could love?
Glitch Art's Chicago Roots As advances in technology and the mere presence of the Internet drive progress in the digital arts, so has bunka 42
glitch art evolved. Entire communities have sprouted up on the web to nurture the discipline from the bottom up, like the Chicago-based 0p3nr3p0 glitch art repository. UIMA’s "glitChicago" exhibit, which opened on August 1st, pays homage to Chicago’s tradition of honing this subculture of electronic artists.Chicago has been a hub for the glitch art movement for years, even before glitch art became a term. Electronic and noise music, the punk rock scene, as well as improv jazz circles, all helped influence the artistic subgenre. The spirit of sharing digital media and the network of DIY art galleries in Chicago also played a part. Since the 1970s, the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago has encouraged artists and software and computer engineers to follow the same
coursework and collaborate. The art and technology program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has been around for decades, and the school’s brief generative systems program influenced a generation of digital artists in Chicago. In the '90s, Chicago hosted important conferences in the digital media space, like the International Symposium of Electronic Art and SIGGRAPH. Glitch art really took off in the past decade, however, as all these trends primed an audience for it. "It wasn’t until recently that glitch artists started referring to themselves as glitch artists," says Paul Hertz, curator of glitChicago. Different techniques of manipulating digital media began to find traction within Internet communities, and artists in Chicago picked up on them.
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"glitch is a cyborg art, building on human/computer interaction." - Daniel Temkin
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faces behind the glitch Kim Asendorf Heitor Magno Beflix (Ant Scott) Paul Hertz Rosa Menkman Jessica Westbrook Scott Fitzgerald Anton Marini Daniel Temkin Jon Satrom Nick Briz Jon Cates A Bill Miller
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Between 2010 and 2012 the Chicago-based glitch artist Nick Briz, along with three other glitch artists, organized the first-ever GLI.TC/H festivals. The first one took place in Chicago, but the organizers realized they needed to bring together the greater international glitch community. The 2011 festival simultaneously panned out in Chicago, Amsterdam, and Birmingham, U.K. Influential glitch artists have emerged from Chicago and onto the international scene. One of them, Jon Cates, coined the term Chicago Dirty New Media, a catch-all term that describes how digital tech can elevate an experience. Even if a glitch artist doesn’t physically hail from the Windy City, she might attribute her style to Chicago’s Dirty New Media.
Software and Art Glitch artists largely rely on a technique called databending to produce their work. Using a basic hex editor, an artist can modify the most rudimentary information in a digital file, like a JPEG image or MPEG video. The artist can open these files in the hex editor and manipulate the binary information behind the files—the ones and zeros—typically with the "Find and Replace" function. Transcoding, another trick behind this new media, involves opening a media file in program that is not expressly designed for it. It’s what would happen if you opened up an image file in an audio editor, applied reverb, and then saved it as an image again. Yet another technique, datamoshing, deals with modifying video compression rates.
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BE N D I N G RE A L I T Y "One of the characteristics of glitch, aside from its origins in errors and system overload, feedback and so on, is that when people try to do it concretely, they often end up working directly with the material of the file itself, below the level of its representation, as an image, or as text, or as audio," says Hertz. In general, glitch art is the process of exploiting misbehavior, however spontaneously or intentionally the defect occurs. The process can either take place in the electronic media or in the encoding behind it. "The process is more important than the result," says Briz. "There’s all kinds of things that can happen when you use technology the wrong way." It’s one thing to make something that looks cool, but the aesthetic isn’t the interesting part of glitch art; it’s the process. Sometimes, the very use of technology takes second stage, as well. "We tend to put the onus on our machine, but really something has happened in the system because it
hasn’t responded as per our designed or expected use," says Briz. The gist of the artwork doesn’t have to center on how machines misbehave. It can represent any system’s misbehavior, even taking a political tone. Two French glitch artists helped create a concept piece called Corrupt.desktop. The experience starts when someone downloads the artists’ Mac OS X-compatible computer program onto a display computer at an Apple store or retailer. After installing it, the app icon appears in the app dock, looking like Safari. An unassuming Apple customer could inadvertently open it, visually distorting the desktop. The cacophony of desktops breaking apart while Apple employees slowly realize it makes a political statement. The glitch then becomes a part of the whole store’s ecosystem. Corrupt.desktop has a spot on GitHub, in keeping with the spirit of sharing tools and artwork in the glitch art community. And the code
behind the project, openFrameworks, is a C++ based program, created by artists, for artists. Starting as far back as the '80s, digital artists started creating software especially for creating glitches in systems and machines. Hertz wrote a program called GlitchSort for students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which took off in the online community. Monglot, by Rosa Menkman, and Kim Asendorf’s pixel sorting program were also influential. Apart from software, general advances in technology have made glitch art find a foothold in the artistic landscape. A small subset of artists experimented with transcoding in the nineties. Before that, artists manipulated analog audio signals and transmuted them into images. “In the late sixties, it was hard to show computational art in a gallery,” says Hertz, even if this type of art started showing up around then. You see it more now because technology has just gotten a lot cheaper.
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BE N D I N G RE A L I T Y
“A VR installation that cost a quarter of a million dollars to put up over at UIC, you can probably do for five thousand now,” he says. Computers are more powerful, too, and the Internet has liberated artists from galleries to circulate their work. A Yahoo group called “Databenders” surfaced around the time when Yahoo groups were just taking shape, and a Flickr group called “Glitch Art” brought glitch artists in contact with one another, including Briz. Facebook groups and Reddit threads have cropped up in the last five years. Two French glitch artists helped create a concept piece called Corrupt. desktop. The experience starts when someone downloads the artists’ Mac bunka 48
OS X-compatible computer program onto a display computer at an Apple store or retailer. After installing it, the app icon appears in the app dock, looking like Safari. An unassuming Apple customer could inadvertently open it, visually distorting the desktop. The cacophony of desktops breaking apart while Apple employees slowly realize it makes a political statement. The glitch then becomes a part of the whole store’s ecosystem. Corrupt.desktop has a spot on GitHub, in keeping with the spirit of sharing tools and artwork in the glitch art community. And the code behind the project, openFrameworks, is a C++ based program, created by artists, for artists. Starting as far back as the ‘80s, digital
artists started creating software especially for creating glitches in systems and machines. Hertz wrote a program called GlitchSort for students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which took off in the online community. Monglot, by Rosa Menkman, and Kim Asendorf’s pixel sorting program were also influential. Apart from software, general advances in technology have made glitch art find a foothold in the artistic landscape. A small subset of artists experimented with transcoding in the nineties. Before that, artists manipulated analog audio signals and transmuted them into images. Before that, artists manipulated analog audio signals.
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We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have w eird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box. -Robert Fulghum bunka 51