Gameplay Journal Entry #6

This week we looked at the art of post-digital aesthetics and how they use failures in technology like glitches to create an emotional response. This is done in different mediums such as video games, pictures, videos and music. As I learned about this particular avenue of art a song and music video came straight to mind. The song demonstrates these very glitches as well as the music video. As the video tells a story the shots will blur or produce a static like effect which produces a compelling sense of disorder and confusion. The music of the song also uses distorted cacophonous sounds

I felt that this aesthetic fit perfectly with the readings description,

“The ‘post-digital’ aesthetic was developed in part as a result of the immersive experience of working in environments suffused with digital technology: computer fans whirring, laser printers churning out documents, the sonification of user-interfaces, and the muffled noise of hard drives. But more specifically, it is from the ‘failure’ of digital technology that this new work has emerged: glitches, bugs, application errors, system crashes, clipping, aliasing, distortion, quantization noise, and even the noise floor of computer sound cards are the raw materials composers seek to incorporate into their music.” (Cascone 2000, 12–13)

The main glitches I was focused on were the Theremin like guitar effect and the static blur video editing. These glitches were obvious that they are not actual technical failures but corruptions of something orderly and of beauty. The song is titled Human Sadness. I feel these aesthetics highlight the goal of the song and video to show harmony and chaos in the everyday world.

4:08 (Video and Sound glitch example)

Works Cited

2000. “The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music.” Computer Music Journal. V. 24:4, pp. 12–18, Winter. USA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.