(he)artbreaking to the core. zombie data and the arts of re/de/transcoding

nina.wenhart interface cukltures lab, art university linz, .AT

failure as a truly digital aesthetic

I'm going to focus on that part of my paper that describes using failure as an aesthetic expression that creates one of the few truly digital aesthetics. This aesthetic results from a mix of processes and effects such as

- techniques of ostranenie (making things strange)

- various forms of hacking

- strategies of creative abuse

artistic and theoretical base

I am building these theories on works of artists such as

JODI, Sven Koenig, Rosa Menkman, Melissa Barron, Jeff Donaldson, Eva and Franco Mattes

… and on the theories of Florian Cramer, Tilman Baumgärtel, Viktor Shklovsky

suorce coed as materila

JODI

creative abuse

- code as material

- New Language of New Media, full of references and relations, ruptures and departures

- Media Art as a process, not as a product.

creative abuse

pre-digital pre-decessorsappropriation art, readymades, détournement, sampling, cut-

up, remixing, bricolage

vs

digital→ impact on operability

Signal processing is de-&reconstruction in its original architectural sense: it reworks the very statics of code.

the great refusal

“Whether ritualized or not, art contains the rationality of negation. In its advanced positions, it

is the – the protest against that which is. The modes in which men and things are made to appear, to sing and sound and speak, are modes of refuting, breaking, and recreating their factual existence.”

Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man

this approach is...

… “critical and ironic, disrespectful and deconstructivist.

The artists do not take technological dispositives for granted, but rather manipulate and abuse, circumvent and modify”

Tilman BaUmgärtel

hacking

Tilman BaUmgärtel says “customizing or even redesigning digital code” as a form of hacking. Hacker culture has become a role model for artistic political disobedience, critique and aesthetics. Out of a “lack of respect for technological givens”

Bazon Brock says “laughing terror”

Noam ChoMsky says

hacker ethics+aesthetics

fLorian cramerintentional crudeness as an alternative computer aesthetics that in and of itself conforms w “classical philosophical notions of the sublime as the opposite of beauty”

tilman baumgÄrtel “[hacker ethics are] at the core of all creative use and more importantly the creative abuse of computer technology.”

ostranenie

Viktor Shklovsky

defamiliarization, “Verfremdungseffekt” (alienation effect → Brecht) live from making known things appear strange, thereby creating confusion in the audience.

confusion bec we become estranged from what sth used to mean, meaning is not negotiated yet

ostranenie

→ “failure” as a temporal, temposurreal, temposensitive form only exists as long as it can escape semantical negotiation

→ failure is a magic creature

“i stare at the glitch as a

void of knowledge”

r0sa menkman

making things strange

Language Games, Ludwig Wi11g3nst3in …....... ….............::....:::::::...:::...:::...::::::::....:::::::....:::..::..:..:..:..................... rule-following …............. = ............. play the same game. ….....................//////......................................................//////................................................................ artistic code interventions → rule-following itself is perverted, resulting in ostranenie..........................................................................................................game of renegotiating meaning as battle/play//ground on code and meta code levels ............ ........................................................//////////.......

making things strange

Poetic Language must appear strange and wonderful

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