This summer, the Stamp Gallery presents Mixing Signals, an all-video exhibition featuring the simultaneous screenings of works by three video artists. This exhibition brings together two different realms of video: glitch art and generative art. Although the works of these artists differ in approach and visual form, they are united through a shared fascination in experimentation, repetition, and chaotic beauty. In the words of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, “Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules, which are repeated without end.”
Artist Jason Ting immerses the viewer in the world of generative art, also called computer art. Experimentation is at the heart of his techniques, which utilize complex systems to generate evolving visual works. By coding or otherwise laying out sets of simple (or sometimes quite complex) rules, then applying these rules repeatedly to different types of initial conditions, Ting coaxes the beauty out of math.
The technology that we use to capture, store, process, and display video is inherently imperfect. Instead of fighting against these imperfections, glitch artists Tachyons+ and Analog_Mannequin revel in them. One of the essential elements of glitch art is feedback. By taking the output of a device and running it back into itself, the concept of “simple rules... repeated” appears, too, in glitch art. This feedback manifests in applications as direct as pointing a camera at a television displaying its own output or as complex as internal feedback in “circuit bent” video processors.
These three artists' videos will be accompanied by a visual "curatorial perspective" created by Mixing Signals curator and fellow video artist Oliver Foley '25, whose work bridges glitch and generative methods. Mixing Signals is part of a series of student-curated exhibitions.
FREE and open to the public. The Gallery is open during the summer Mondays–Fridays: 12-5pm. Closed Saturday–Sunday.