Rosa Menkman
Tipping Point of Failure: The Art of Noise Artifacts
An infinite variety of noise definitions
Following information theory, noise possesses a very specific set of connotations or even rules. In this theory, noise has been isolated to the different occasions in which the static, linear notion of transmitting information is interrupted. Which in the digital can be sub-divided into glitch, encoding / decoding (of which in the digital compression is the most ordinary form) and feedback artifacts. Artists exploit these artifacts to make (reflexive) media specific art works; as is for instance done by Gijs Gieskes in his Sega Mega Drive 2 (2007), Paul Davis in codec (2009) and botborg’s live at Ars Electronica Festival (2007) video.
The art of noise artifacts
Noise is more complex then what can be explained via information theory; the ‘meaning’ of noise differs per perspective. Etymologically, the term noise refers to states of aggression, alarm and powerful sound phenomena in nature ('rauschen'), such as storm, thunder and the roaring sea. Moreover, when noise is explored within a social context or in art, the term is often used as a figure of speech and possesses many more meanings. Sometimes, noise stands for unaccepted sounds; not music, not valid information or what is not a message. Noise can also stand for a (often undesirable, unwanted, other and unordered) disturbance, or a break or addition within the linear transmission of useful data. Whichever way noise is defined, its negative definition also has a positive consequence: it helps by (re)defining its opposite (the world of meaning, the norm, regulation, goodness, beauty and so on).
Some artists intentionally elucidate and deconstruct the hierarchies of digital technologies. They do not work in (binary) opposition to what is inside the flows (the normal uses of the computer) but practice on the border of these flows. Sometimes, artists use the computers’ inherent maxims as a façade, to trick the audience into a flow of certain expectation that the artwork subsequently rapidly breaks out of. As a result, the spectator is forced to acknowledge that the computer is a closed assemblage based on a genealogy of conventions, while at the same time the computer is actually a machine that can be bend or used in many different ways.
Digital noise artifacts thus exist as a paradox; while they are often negatively defined, they also have a positive, generative or redefining quality. The break of a flow within technology (the noise artifact) generates a void that is not only a lack of meaning. It also forces the audience to move away from the traditional discourse around a particular technology and to ask questions about its meaning. Through this void, artists can thus voice a critique towards digital media and spectators can be forced to recognize the inherent politics behind the codes of digital media.
So while most people experience noise artifacts as something negative (or as an accident), I am of the opinion that the positive consequences of these imperfections and the new opportunities they facilitate should be emphasized. Noise artifacts can be a source for new patterns, anti-patterns and new possibilities that often exist on a border or membrane (of for instance language). With the creation of breaks from the politics and social and economical conventions of the technological machine, the audience may become aware of its inherent preprogrammed patterns.
Biography
Every technology possess its own inherent accidents. Rosa Menkman is a Dutch visualist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media. The visuals she makes are the result of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise. Although many people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, Rosa emphasizes their positive consequences.
By combining both her practical as well as her academic background, she merges her abstract pieces within a grand theory artifacts (a glitch studies). Besides the creation of a formal "Vernacular of File Formats", within her static work, she also creates (narrative) work in her Acousmatic Videoscapes. In these Videoscapes she strives for new forms of conceptual synthesis (synesthesia) of sound and video artifacts.
She has shown her work at festivals like Cimatics (Brussels '08 + 09), Blip (Europe and US in 2009), Video Vortex (Amsterdam '08 + Brussels '09), ISEA (Dublin '09) and File (Sao Paolo '10) and collaborated on art projects together with Alexander Galloway, little-scale, Govcom.org, Goto80 and the internet art collective Jodi.org. She was also one of the organizers/curators of the successful GLI.TC/H festival that took place in Chicago in 2010, and some other festivals.
http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com/