ANIMAL’s feature Artist’s Notebook asks artists to show us their original “idea sketch” next to a finished piece. This week, Daniel Temkin talks about corrupting images with a sound editor in his Glitchometry project.

I spent a week at Alfred University’s Institute for Electronic Arts, immersing myself in my ongoing project Glitchometry. To make Glitchometry images, I corrupt images in a sound editor, a process called sonification, but do this only to simple geometric shapes (plain black squares and triangles). As the shapes break down, feedback builds on noise in the system, crystalizing into new forms:

Each piece requires a lengthy series of manual steps; dozens or hundreds of iterations. Unfortunately, many end up very low resolution. My proposal for the residency — my sketch as it were — was to build more intricate, larger pieces than I’d attempted before, while avoiding dueling progress bars from working on huge amounts of data:

In the midst of experimenting with new techniques for Glitchometry, I played with delay effects. The visual result was mostly horizontal, so I experimented on a test file with vertical black and white stripes to isolate it.

And got this:

I found that combinations of flanger or delay effects, with long periods of different lengths applied to each color channel, give trippy effects that make my eyes hemorrhage.

The vibrating patterns and hyperchromatic combinations of Bridget Riley and Edna Andrade have appealed to me since childhood, and I’ve experimented with these types of visual effects in work like my Dither Studies. But to come across something reminiscent of it here was a happy accident. I began experimenting more, using it as a break from the intense work of managing huge files for the rest of the Glitchometry project. I continued to use just flanger & delay on the same image of stripes with different settings. Here are more of the resulting images:

I made prints too!

More images from the series can be seen here.

Artist’s Notebook

Artist’s Notebook: Rick Silva

Artist’s Notebook: Nicolas Sassoon

Artist’s Notebook: Faith Holland

Artist’s Notebook: A. Bill Miller

Artist’s Notebook: Addie Wagenknecht

Artist’s Notebook: Lorna Mills

Artist’s Notebook: The Yok and Sheryo

Artist’s Notebook: Yoshi Sodeoka

Artist’s Notebook: Alexandra Gorczynski

Artist’s Notebook: Christian Rex Van Minnen

Artist’s Notebook: Organ Armani

Artist’s Notebook: Actually Huzienga

Artist’s Notebook: Cody Critcheloe, SSION

Artist’s Notebook: Man Bartlett

Artist’s Notebook: Elizabeth Valleau

Artist’s Notebook: Eva and Franco Mattes

Artist’s Notebook: Anthony Antonellis [NSFW]

Artist’s Notebook: COPE2

Artist’s Notebook: Evan Roth

Artist’s Notebook: Ryder Ripps

Artist’s Notebook: Kristin Reger

Artist’s Notebook: Nate Hill

Artist’s Notebook: CYCLE

Artist’s Notebook: Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw

Artist’s Notebook: Andrea Mary Marshall

Artist’s Notebook: Angela Washko

Artist’s Notebook: Ron English

Artist’s Notebook: William Powhida

Artist’s Notebook: ULTRAFUTURO

Artist’s Notebook: Molly Crabapple

Artist’s Notebook: Mark Kostabi

Artist’s Notebook: Rollin Leonard

Artist’s Notebook: Don Hertzfeldt