↫

Affective Artifacts

If we feel a certain nostalgia towards the crackle of a vynil or to the granular quality of images taken with a film camera, it is because these marks take us back to another era. These grains, these indices, these media markers, are what I like to call affective artifacts, and can inhabit any medium.

Though today, within the context of digital media, these artifacts are treated quite differently as markers of low quality, of bad resolution, of destructive compression. Those that we adorned in the past, we reject in the present. As if our sense of aesthetic was guided by the ideal of a noise-less image, whose standards has been set by techno-enthusiast digital media enterprise and fantasies of hyperrealism.

Yet these markers keep inhabiting the media landscape and are often times even re-employed artificially. As an example, much of the lofi music movement is recorded with high-grade studio equipment before being surgically downgraded (using fake tape sounds, filters,..) to induce nostalgia within listeners. Though affective artifacts are often linked to nostalgia, there also exists other types of affective powers in use today. In 2016 Trump released a video campaign which used glitch SXF overlaid over his competitors to emphasize on his accusations of corruption within the government in place. This is on-par with most recent aesthetic development of the fachosphère, with the rise of aesthetics genre's such as fashwave, using elements from glitch and vaporwave art communities as political tools for fascist agenda's.

Though affective artifacts are often invisible to the untrained eye, I believe they shape our society at various levels from the most intimate ones such as whatsapp family groups, up to the most rational and objective ones of scientific imagery.

Credit

The artistic project is an ongoing research developed with the support of Sorbonne University's artistic residency program.


Affective Artifacts is a term that was first coined by Jon Cates in a blog post about post-glitch :

“glitch” is now widely accessible as: a possibility, shorthand, a (cracked) code, hashtagged to represent an available attitudinal perspective, +/or communicable exchange, a set of surfaces + surface FX as well as affective artifacts that may or may not reach more deeply under these currents...

Since then I have re-appropriated its use and developed it's meaning within a wider media theory that considers glitches as one of the many types of affective artifacts.

Dates

  • 09.06.2022 Creative Writting Class @ State University, Minneapolis, USA
  • 11.24.2022 Master 2 "l'art contemporain et son exposition" @ INHA, Paris, France
  • 02.12.2023 Le Glitch Art comme Langage d'Affect @ Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris, France
A person giving a presentation in a dimly lit room, standing to the left and reading from a paper, with an audience seated and facing a screen displaying a large image of a cat with the words "STADE INDICIEL" above it.
📷 Sabato Visconti
@ Glitch Art is Dead, Granite Falls, Minnesota, USA
The image shows a red poppy flower displayed on a digital screen with a visible crack running across it, distorting the flower's image with streaks and fragmented lines indicative of the damaged screen.
📷 RDKL Inc.
A vintage, black and white family scene. Three individuals are around a dining table adorned with several pitchers and fruit. A woman, standing, is actively engaging with a seated young boy, while a man in a tank top stands opposite the table, seemingly in mid-conversation or action. The image exudes a casual, intimate domestic setting, possibly capturing a moment of daily life. The sunlight streaming through a window on the left adds to the nostalgic quality of the photograph.
📷 Kaspar Ravel, Family Archive
An old, sepia-toned photograph showing two children sitting on a doorstep. The child in the foreground appears to be a young girl looking directly at the camera with a calm, perhaps curious expression. Her hair is styled in what seems like pigtails, and she is in a light-colored dress. The second child is in the background, with their back to the camera, focused on an activity out of view. They are both bathed in soft light, possibly indicating a sunny day. The texture and quality of the photo suggest it was taken several decades ago.
📷 Kaspar Ravel, Family Archive
A vintage black-and-white photograph showing a young man standing in the corridor of a train. He is casually leaning on the frame of an open train door, looking directly into the camera with a calm and slightly inquisitive expression. The man is dressed in a dark, button-up shirt and trousers, with his hair neatly combed. The light coming from the windows of the train creates a high contrast in the corridor, casting deep shadows and bright highlights throughout the scene. The photograph has the characteristic imperfections of age, such as scratches and dust marks, which add to its historical ambiance.
📷 Kaspar Ravel, Family Archive
A black-and-white photograph taken from the perspective of a driver inside a vehicle, as indicated by the visible section of the dashboard and the iconic Mercedes-Benz emblem centered on the car's bonnet. The view is of a two-lane road stretching forward, lined with leafless trees suggesting a fall or winter season. There is a clear sky, and another vehicle is visible in the distance, driving in the same direction. The photograph has the hallmarks of an older film camera, with a grainy texture and some dust and scratches, which could suggest it's a vintage photo.
📷 Kaspar Ravel, Family Archive