Ever since the earliest astronomer tried to make sense of the endless night sky, human beings have sought order in systems of chaos. We’re driven to control disarray by understanding it, either scientifically or poetically. Both of those widely divergent approaches to the unknown have been boosted by the last century’s giant strides forward in technology.
Not only can we now map the human genome and access centuries of human thought at the click of a mouse, but technology has also introduced vast new quarries of chaotic, random material for artists and poets to obsess over. And that’s just what Glitch: Designing Imperfection is about– it’s a book celebrating the anarchy of distortion, the creativity intrinsic to grisly computer crashes.
This illuminating volume meditates on the meaning and meaninglessness of glitch– the beauty and the terror of pixelated, involuntary abstraction– through enlightening interviews and work from dozens of rad digital media wizards like Johnny Rogers and Cory Arcangel. Sifting through 900 submissions, the curators of Glitch: Designing Imperfection have spent four years compiling the definitive resource on the visual art of synthetic chaos.
Video artist and sculptor Ryan Trecartin’s D.I.Y. digital opuses are overwhelming in their labyrinthine visual complexity, reaching new aesthetic depths through a deluge of multi-layered raw footage spliced together faster than we can process what we’re seeing. As a device, dazzling viewers with an over-stimulated cyberdelic assualt is nothing new– but the key to Trecartin’s success is his indelibly strong grasp on the fragmented cacophony he creates. His execution is so meticulous that, combined with the excellent performances (especially the artist’s own), lovingly hand-crafted production deisgn, and hilariously lyrical dialogue, Trecartin’s videos become viscerally resonating trascendental experiences.
The impulsive, manic logic ruling the otherworldly language of Trecartin’s videos is an unsettlingly distorted one, to be sure, but not to the point of becoming indecipherable. Watching a Ryan Trecartin video flexes the same mental muscles that help you decode a 13-year-old’s instant message, or unravel the mysteries of an autistic outsider artist’s cryptic canvas. The generation currently coming of age possesses mutant superpowers of critical thinking– a propoensity for shifting semiotic fundamentals without flinching– thanks to the unassuming interference of the Internet. Ryan Trecartin is making art that allows us to put those fledgling powers to work.
Trecartin’s latest epic, Sibling Topics: (Section A and Section B), is the centerpiece of The New Museum’s triennial celebrating artists below the age of 33, Younger Than Jesus. The exhibit, which closes July 5th, also showcases work from Cory Arcangel, Cao Fei, Brendan Fowler and dozens of other trippendicular pretty young things. Check out Trecartin’s feature length 2007 video below, I-Be AREA.
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