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Rosa Menkman 

(*1983) 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.

By combining both her practical as well as her academic background, Rosa Menkman 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.

 

Source: Rosa Menkman's blog

 

 

Rosa Menkman: "Whenever I use a normal transparent technology, I only see one aspect of the actual machine. I have learned to ignore the interface and all structural components, to be able to understand a message or use a technology as fast as possible.

The glitches I trigger turn the technology back into the obfuscated box that it already was. They shroud its inner workings and the source of the output as a sublime black veil. I perceive glitches without knowing where they originate from. This gives me and the audience an opportunity to concentrate better on their form - to interpret their structures and to learn more from what can actually be seen. An example of such a work is for instance my video Radio Dada (2008).  I prefer to show this work and give the explanation of what technically happened only after a discussion of what the audience has seen and heard.

The glitches I create an acousmatic videoscape in which I can finally perceive an output outside of my goggles of speed, transparency and usability. The new structures that unfold themselves can be interpreted as a portal to an utopia, a paradise like dimension, but also as a black hole that threatens to destroy the technology as I knew it.

In the acousmatic videoscapes I make, I use critical trans-media aesthetics to theorize the human thinking about technology; it creates an opportunity for self reflexivity, self critique and self expression.  It uses synesthesia not just as a metaphor for transcoding one medium upon another (with a new algorithm), but a conceptually driven meeting of the visual and the sonic within the newly uncovered quadrants of technology."

 

Source: Videoscapes

 

 

Rosa Menkman, flicker / strobe

Reading

Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses (2002) by Richard E. Cytowic disposes of earlier criticisms that the phenomenon cannot be real, demonstrating that it is indeed brain-based. Following a historical introduction, Cytowic lays out the phenomenology of synesthesia in detail and gives criteria for clinical diagnosis and an objective test of genuineness. (MIT Press)

Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (1994) by French critic and composer Michel Chion reassesses audiovisual media since the revolutionary 1927 debut of recorded sound in cinema, shedding crucial light on the mutual relationship between sound and image in audiovisual perception. (Colombia University Press)

Digital Harmony (1980): On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art – John Whitney, Sr. wanted to create a dialog between "the voices of light and tone." All of his early experiments in film and the development of sound techniques lead toward this end. He felt that music was an integral part of the visual experience; the combination had a long history in man's primitive development and was part of the essence of life. His theories On the complementarity of Music and Visual Art were explained in his book, Digital Harmony, published by McGraw-Hill in 1980. (Paradise 2012)

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SEE ALSO

Paul Sharits (1943-1993) is widely known for his structural films, the use of multiple projectors, infinite film loops, experimental soundtracks, and interventions at the level of the filmstrip in order to realize his elemental mode of cinematic presentation. Trained initially as a painter, and a prolific theoretical writer, Paul Sharits' art-making was in fact wide-ranging, evidenced by his early involvement with Fluxus artists in New York. His many works on paper — from diagrams to abstract film scores, fashion drawings, and hallucinogenic illustrations — have yet to be fully integrated into his better-known body of work. (paulsharits.com)

Blazes (1961) is a three-minute film directed by Robert Breer, a well-known avant-garde artist, animator, and film director. This short film displays Breer’s signature style: animation, playful abstraction, and fast-moving images. In Breer’s own words, Blazes is essentially "One hundred basic images switching positions for four thousands frames. A continuous explosion." Indeed, the film consists of stills resembling abstract paintings of basic shapes in basic colors, cut and combined in different ways and rhythms. (Kathleen Sun)

Paul Sharits (2008) edited by Yann Beauvais. Known primarily for his experimental cinema and pictorial works, Paul Sharits developed an oeuvre that evolved around two central themes: one, closely related to music and the world of abstraction, the other, within the psychological and emotional arena of the figurative. This complete monograph, drawn from a recent exhibition, explores the connections between these two practices, and in addition provides a general introduction to a remarkable body of work. Illustrated throughout, the monograph also includes several essays, texts by Paul Sharits and interviews. (les presses du réel)

Shutter Interface (1975) by Paul Sharits is a hypnotic work a quartet of 16mm projectors stand, figure-like, side by side on imposing pedestals facing a long wall. Four looped films of varying lengths are unspooled and respooled in jewel-like swathes of colour interspersed with single black frames, creating the flicker effect Paul Sharits was the first to explore in colour films. (Frieze Magazine)

Daihei Shibata (*1982) is a Japanese visual artist. He graduated from Chiba University, specializing in media design. Just after the graduation, he became a member of WOW inc., working in motion graphics, including video installation works, TV commercials, and short films. Daihei Shibata always tries to find new possibilities in visual expressions in wide range of fields.