Artist of the Week: Mark Klink

I’m not gonna lie, Glitch Art is really new to me. Though I am on my computer every day and I’ll stay quite aware about art in general, the term Glitch Art just appeared to me some weeks ago. Since then I’ve been teaching myself to catch up with the theme and I feel really privileged to get the opportunity to chat with Mark Klink about it. Mark, as he put it himself, is “a teacher, an artist and occasionally a programmer.” Well I am fond of Mark’s work. I wish all my teachers were like Mark – I would have gone to school a bit more. Please meet Mark Klink, our artist of the week.

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KALTBLUT: Who are you, where are you from and what do you do?

Mark: I’m a digital artist and a school teacher, specializing in teaching children the use of computers. I live in Carmichael, California, which is a suburb of the state capitol, Sacramento.

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KALTBLUT: How did you get into digital art?

Mark: That’s a long story. I had been an artist, a traditional print maker, leading a semi-bohemian life, working various odd jobs. When my daughter was born, I decided that I needed a regular income. That is when I obtained my teaching credential. This was back before the public Internet, when personal computers were still new and when “going online” meant using a dialup modem to connect to Compuserve or America Online. I obtained a Macintosh to help me complete the teaching credential. Once I had the computer I became fascinated with the graphics capability and with Hypercard. Eventually I became an expert at Hypercard and taught myself programming so I could create XCMDs and XFCNs. Those were extensions coded in lower level computer languages that could give Hypercard new capabilities. Many of ones I wrote were licensed by companies that were creating multimedia programs for CD-ROM. Since this was before the Internet as we know it today, CD-ROM was the only way to deliver a rich multi-media experience. There were probably over a hundred CD-ROMs and other projects that licensed code that I wrote. I also created a small shareware exploration game for children. I did all the coding, the sound, and the graphics. I remember painstakingly creating the black and white graphics, pixel by pixel!

I eventually decided that I didn’t want to be a programmer, and began teaching full time. Nevertheless, I continued to explore the graphic possibilities that computers afforded. As those advanced, I advanced with my art work. When I discovered the open source 3d program Blender, things really took off.

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KALTBLUT: How will describe Glitch Art to someone who has no idea what it is?

Mark: I like the name that Clif Pottberg (one of the administrators of the Facebook group “Glitch Artists Collective) goes under when presenting his work: “Creation By Destruction”. I think that sums it up. In glitch art you take something and then break it somehow. The result is often strangely beautiful. Of course you can’t break a digital file the way you would break a physical thing. A digital file, say a digital photograph, is really nothing more than so many 1s and 0s arranged in patterns. What people don’t realize is that you are free to manipulate those 1s and 0s any way you like. Rather than use the usual software tools in the usual ways, there is no end of unconventional methods you might use to operate on the file and its binary contents. Sometimes, in fact, this will “break” the file.. the binary contents become re-arranged in such a way that they can no longer be read as an image. But sometimes the file survives this mistreatment and is transformed in the process. Colors are shifted, forms are distorted. The result is often a startling and fascinating surprise.

So how do you do this? Often glitch artists will take a text editor – something you would normally use to write notes – and use it to open a digital photo as though it were text! The “text” version of the photo will look like so much nonsense – so many random letters and symbols.. The glitch artist will (somewhat randomly) use copy/paste, find/replace to change and re-arrange the contents of the file. When he or she is done, the file can be opened using a normal picture viewer. If all has gone well, the new version of the picture will be transformed. It might be unrecognizable, or the original subject might still be apparent, but dramatically changed in some way.

Another method is to open the picture file using software that would normally be applied to sounds. If one knows what one is doing, you can apply sound filters.. echoes, reverbs, pitch changes, etc. to what is a visual image. You do have to know what you are doing! Glitch artists, through trial and error and through careful study of the technical details of file formats, gain a sense of what they can get away with without utterly ruining the file.

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KALTBLUT: How did you start to become interested in glitch as an artistic process?

Mark: Initially it was simple curiosity. Glitch Art has been a phenomenon that has been going on for several years. I had experimented a little with methods that were already commonly in use. My personal breakthrough came when it occurred to me that similar methods could be applied to 3d file formats.

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KALTLBUT: Did you attempt any art school?

Mark: Yes. I studied studio art at both the University California Berkeley and Davis campuses. At Berkeley there was a heavy emphasis on the high modernist tradition in abstraction. Hans Hoffmann had once been associated with the school. I eventually transferred to Davis which was the center of the so called California Funk movement. Back then, Davis was one of the most prominent art schools in the country. There were many artists associated with Davis, both teachers and professors, who had national and international reputations. I feel very fortunate to have been able to attend both campuses.

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KALTBLUT: What is your favorite support to work on?

Mark: That’s a little confusing to me. I associate the word “support” with the way it is traditionally used in art, as the support on which a painting or drawing is made.. so that would be canvas or paper! But I’ll take it in the more general sense of “medium”. In that case, since we’re talking about digital art, I’ll answer that I love working with 3d file formats and tools. Even when the end result is meant to represent a 2d surface, I often exploit 3d software and use it in ways that the creators of the software never intended. This is a brand new instrument. We don’t really know, yet, what the possibilities are. We’re too prone to use it to make things similar to what is already familiar.. movies, photos and paintings as we know them now.. but the software is so powerful, with so many options, it contains a world we have barely begun to explore.

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KALTBLUT: Glicht art can be done in  2d, 3d, gifs, video.. What is favourite form and why?

Mark: I definitely favor 3d. I often use 3d techniques which involve mapping a 2d image to a 3d surface, then distorting that mapping and the surface itself in various ways. This is an area that hasn’t been explored as thoroughly as more conventional approaches to 2d. It’s terra incognita. It’s a bit like being there at the beginning of the California Gold Rush.. the nuggets are just lying on the ground, waiting to be picked up!

However, in the long run I think I will move more in the direction of video. Due to the time element, due to the greater possibilities for narrative, due to the synthesis of the visual with the auditory, I think that the there’s a richness to video that other media can’t match.

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KALTBLUT: I particularly love your “GlitchHeads”. What is the purpose behind theses?

Mark: While I am thoroughly enmeshed in digital art and its possibilities, in some ways I’m a very traditional artist. You might even say I am a romantic and a humanist. I still believe that art makes no sense except as a manifestation of human intentionality. Even when an artist contrives an utterly mechanical algorithm to generate an image, the selection and interpretation of that image is a function of human sensibility. We humans really are the most interesting things there are! It is often said that there has been a progressive demotion of humanity. Copernicus demonstrated that we’re not at the physical center of the Universe. After Darwin we knew we were not some special creation exalted above nature. Now accelerating technological progress and especially the prospect of artificial intelligence raises the specter of human obsolescence, or at least some trans-human future in which our cherished values will be meaningless.. and, yes, that may happen.. but, in the meantime, we are “it”. We are the drivers, the source of meaning in this world. In a sense, we really are at the center of the world. For me, the image of the human face and the human head is somehow emblematic of this. We look at the face in a painting by Van Eyck, and it is as though that person is still looking at us, still projecting his or her individual humanity through the intervening centuries.

Of course, it does no good to simply repeat what artists, painters and photographers have done in the past. Art loses its power through familiarity. The world changes. Human sensibility changes. When something is alive it is always manifesting itself in new forms. So, in some respects, I feel I’m carrying on some very old traditions, but in other respects, things are utterly different. The medium is the message. Just as oil paint, the printing press, the photograph and every other technology unleashed waves of creative change, there is no doubt that we are in the midst of an even greater and more rapid explosion of new forms.

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KALTBLUT: In the process of theses “GlitchHeads”,  are you going for an certain aesthetic?

Mark: I didn’t start out with a pre-existing idea that I was hoping to realize. At least not one of which I was conscious. I don’t think Art works very well when you go at it that way.   In addition, one of the reasons I particularly like visual art and music is that I have a distrust of words, of their pat, clearly delimited meanings which we too often take for granted. Nevertheless, I have tried to understand why these particular images have struck a chord with people. Keep in mind, though, that whatever I say is a rationalization after the fact.

Although, as I said, I start with something of an old fashioned humanistic perspective, there is no doubt that perspective is under pressure. What it is to be human.. the validity of what we claim are human values.. all that is in question. There’s a certain background anxiety that people may feel, a certain injured nostalgia. Perhaps the distortions and “damage” those GlitchHeads display resonates on that account. I usually render the pieces in black and white, which, I think, heightens the sense of alienation. At the same time, I think there’s a simple beauty to that starkness. Art, and the appreciation of beauty ( the nature of beauty is very complex) are positive gestures. Despite the anxiety, despite the alienation, we still strive… I confessed that I was a Romantic, didn’t I!!

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KALTBLUT: When you start a new piece, what is your goal?

Mark: I usually don’t start with a goal. I’m often just exploring a technical possibility. As I find out what the software “wants to do” – which is often not what the original designer of the software intended – I gradually discover the imagery to which that technical exploration would naturally lead.

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KALTBLUT: What attracts artists to the computer as a tool?

Mark: The computer is wonderful. First off, it allows me to work far more rapidly that I could using traditional methods. I can try out a dozen ideas in no time at all. For an old artist, “Undo” is a miracle! The ability to composite work.. to have multiple “layers” with separate images on each layer.. is extremely powerful. You can easily manipulate and move the imagery on any of the layers separately from all the others. This makes it easy to experiment with compositions.

But, above all, it is the fact that this is a new medium. It hasn’t been worked over the way older media have. There’s a real possibility of discovering something new, rather than merely spinning variations on what has already been thoroughly explored by past artists.

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KALTBLUT: Who are some digital artists that we should all know about (or any flying under the radar)? What are your influences?

Mark: 1. I don’t think any discussion of glitch art should fail to mention Rosa Menkman. She’s the foremost theorist of glitch and a fine glitch artist in her own right. She just had a one woman show at the Transfer gallery in New York.

2. Kim Asendorf is the artist most well known for the use of algorithms to disrupt images.

3. However, I believe that Paul Hertz should receive more attention than he has. He’s one of the true pioneers when it comes to utilizing algorithms as a means for glitch. If you go to his flickr, be sure to navigate to the full size version of the images. Only then can you see how rich they are. For example: this  and  this

4. Dane Carney, better known as Yenrac Enad and letsglitchit, is currently the foremost advocate of the use of sonification to glitch images.

5. Mitch Posada is one of the most inventive artists out there. His work is sometimes hard to track down..He’s an “Artist’s Artist” who doesn’t do enough to self-promote! I’ll include a couple links: www.ofluxo.net/mitch-posada , mposada.tumblr.com .. but you really need to  do a Google image search for “Mitch Posada”.

6. Logan Owlbeemoth is a master of circuit bending, feedback and analog video glitch. He makes his own custom hardware to create his effects. (tachyonsplus.tumblr.com  , osovni.tumblr.com)

7. Lorna Mills is well known for her animated .gifs. Her most recent project, the film “Ways of Something” is brilliant. She coordinated numerous artists who each created a one minute segment of the film. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Mills vimeo.com/user1988175)

8. One of the artists who contributed to Lorna’s film is Dafna Ganani. Her segment included a stunning animation of an environment reflected in an array of flying mirror balls. She’s also linked the worlds of performance art and online art.
(dafnaganani.tumblr.comvimeo.com/user2581113)

9. Sabato Visconti is widely known for his work glitching photographs. He’s a sort of Jack of All Trades, who uses many techniques.

10. Ugur Engin Deniz has  done remarkable work with 3d glitching techniques. (vimeo.com/engindeniz)

Interview by Nicolas Simoneau

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