Plotting Glitches, 2011-2012

Digital screen program. Additional credits: Todd Margolis, Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA). Acknowledgements: Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass, Software Studies Initiative, UCSD.

Artist’s Synopsis

Computer glitches are the completely random, unpredictable and unexpected failures of digital systems. They are the result of approximated values and computational compensations for inaccessible information. Unlike bugs or faulty programming which can be tracked back to errors in code, glitches are fleeting and are often the result of untraceable truncated data streams or rounded values. These short-lived faults are part of our contemporary experience – they are inextricably linked to our engagement with digital technology and information transfer.

Glitches highlight the levels of abstraction, risk and instability that accompany the translation of information via digital means. They interfere with the notion of perfect digital reproduction, and remind us of the constructed and transient nature of data. Plotting Glitches seeks to understand the patterns and complexity in computer glitches using a sample set of over 8000 glitches. The glitch images are processed to extract information such as entropy, hue, colour saturation, shape, etc. The values are then visualized in an effort to discover interesting patterns and features. These image plots are one means of visualization which provide the ability to explore large collections of glitches from multiple sources simultaneously. Plotting Glitches crowd-sources its content from hundreds of users who have submitted their glitches to public domain web sites such as Flickr. This project is part of a larger multi-modal inquiry that employs animated 3D models, rapid prototype sculptures, time re-mapping and data extraction to investigate glitches within an art/research practice.

Artist’s Biography

Tracy Cornish is an Australian artist and researcher with a Doctorate of Philosophy by Research in Visual Art. She is currently a Research Scholar at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at the University of California, San Diego and an adjunct professor in digital cinema and new media at the University of California, San Diego.

In 2008 she was the recipient of the prestigious Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Art Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited in Australia, the United States and Europe.

Recent exhibitions include Transmediale 2012, Berlin, Out of the Box, San Francisco and Local Art, San Diego. In 2011, she guest lectured at Union College in New York, the Interactive Media Division of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and presented her work at the Augmented Reality Development Camp at Qualcomm. In December 2011 she was a panelist for next generation digital cinema at Cinegrid 2011.

Her work explores complex systems in information culture by interweaving theoretical critique and digital media into an experimental visual arts practice. Recent artwork employs experimental digital cinema, mixed reality, augmented reality and alternate reality games as platforms for exploring new forms of audience interaction, intervention and participatory culture. Her ongoing research into glitches explores the potential for these random and unpredictable errors to be employed as an entry point into a critique of post-digital culture.

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