Would you believe it, it’s already time for your monthly dose of glitchy goodness. I’ve weathered earthquakes, typhoons and a dodgy knee to bring your Issue #9 of the Error Logs.

In this month’s outing, we’re going to be taking a look at an awesome Japanese folklore glitch sculptor, as well as looking at some cool live glitch scripts for Processing. But, before we get on to that, let’s start with a few updates.

News and Updates

So, what have I been up to this month? August has been a pretty busy month, but it’s mostly been about getting some projects finished which aren’t ready to announce yet, or laying the groundwork for new things. That means I don’t have a ton of big news to share yet.

On the art front, I finished up my Glitch Kitty series, which I’ve been posting on Instagram.

These glitches were a lot of fun to make as I love how the colours blend and the lines distort. And the way the cats seem to dissolve into the curves gives off big cat energy. Very demure, very mindful.

Don’t forget you can buy these as prints over at my INPRNT store. They’re the perfect gift for someone who loves cats, but doesn’t like that cliched “Live, Laugh, Love” nonsense.

Deadweight Date: The Motherboard Awakens v0.2.2

As I’ve mentioned in the past couple of Error Logs, I’ve been busy with a project recently. And at last, I can excitedly announce that I’ve been working on some artwork for the band Deadweight Date’s new song, “The Motherboard Awakens v0.2.2”

It was a lot of fun working on this and I’m really pleased with how it came out. I think it captures the mood of the song really well. Regular followers of my work will know that I love doing portraits and robotifying (androidifying? cyborglarizing?) people, and Dusty, the singer, was a great subject to glitch, as she has a striking look that gave me a lot to work with, and I think the final result strikes this balance that matches the music; divine yet sinister, human yet machine.

I also did some live performance glitches for them too which came out looking cool.

This is their debut song. I had the privilege of hearing some of their demos and I’m excited to see what they do next.

So, if you like glitchy sounding music about a psychotic AI that makes you think about what it means to be a human, go check out their IG page and Bandcamp.

Error In Control

Last issue I wrote about a couple of art exhibitions that were holding open calls, one of them being Error in Control, which is being held in Tbilisi in Georgia. I was lucky enough to be invited by the organizers to exhibit some of my older works. I think there’s a tendency for some of us artists that are based on social media to only focus on current or new works, but we shouldn’t forget to give our older works some love from time to time too.

I’m not going to write too much about what I’ll be exhibiting until after the exhibition is over.

But if you’re near Tbilisi, you should definitely go and check it out. The main theme of the exhibition is to explore the connection between technology, politics and media through the medium of glitch art. The exhibition will be running from September 1 - 22 (new exhibition dates of September 14 - October 6) at the Holoseum in Tbilisi. There will be 30 artists participating. Here’s the full list of artists nabbed from the IG.

Sadly, Georgia is a little far from Japan, so I won’t be able to make it, but hopefully there will be some nice photos online, which I’ll try to share if I see any.

*NB - Just as I was publishing this, the exhibition dates changed to September 14 - October 6

Yhna.talks

Yhna.talks is a new platform created to help emerging artists discover what paths are available to them when it comes to a career in art. It was created by Yhna art (formerly known as Flesh Circuit) and will be platforming interviews with artists from different backgrounds to create an open dialogue for both freshfaced, and curious… ripefaced(?) artists to learn something new

I was lucky enough to be asked to be the first interviewee, so if you’re interested in finding out about my inspirations, the mistakes I’ve made in my artistic journey, or you just want to know the context for this quote:

“…using an 18th century french cannon from the Napoleonic Wars (the Canon de 12 Gribeauval to be exact) to fire paint onto the canvas, in space.”

then be sure to give it a read:

Check out the IG

Or alternatively, check out the Substack 

ALT:VISION 247 Digital Art Gallery

Remember a few issues ago where I had some of my glitch art featuring in the first edition of ALT:VISION magazine, well now the project has gone online with a new 24:7 Digital Art Gallery. And not only, that, guess who has some work featuring!

Go check out my works made exclusively for the ALT:VISION 247 Gallery.

This series is called Broken Mascbots of the World Wide Web, and it was inspired by the people I meet online.

Spotlight: Kenichi Nakaya

I've been doing these newsletters for 8 months now, and I realized I haven't featured a single Japanese glitch artist, despite spending a large portion of my adult life here in Japan.

It got me wondering why that is. Is it because I'm a massive hater (of course not, my whole life philosophy was shaped by this guy)

But for whatever reason I have a massive blind spot.

From what I can tell, there doesn't appear to be a specific glitch scene. At least not on the social media sites I hang out on. Check the Japanese hashtags out on IG - #グリッチアート. They're mostly me and a couple of other artists. But that's not to say there aren't any glitch artists on there, it just that they tend to be absorbed into the broader category of digital art rather than being its own distinct thing. Which is kinda surprising when you consider that there's quite a big glitch music scene here.

Also, in places like Europe, scenes can be centered around certain groups. And because of language barriers, some Japanese glitch artists that are on social media might not always post in English.

But if anyone with more knowledge would be kind enough to share some info, I'd love to do a deep dive in a future feature of the Error Logs (don't worry, I'm not going to come and hang out with you. Saying hello to Amazon delivery guy is enough social interaction for me)

Anyway, I want to start showcasing more Japanese artists and helping bridge that gap.

Perhaps one of the side effects of there not being a dedicated glitch scene in Japan is that there are quite a few artists who incorporate the aesthetic or concept of glitch into other mediums of art.

One such artist is Kenichi Nakaya, a self-styled Japanese folklore artist. He primarily works with carvings and sculptures.

"You can't databend a sculpture", I hear you cry. And you'd technically be correct, but what if you took the principles of glitch art and applied them to a different medium. So instead of pixelation, your sculpture was made up of Lego blocks, instead of signal distortions and pixel stretching, the wood was distorted during the carving process, instead compression artifacts and noise, your sculpture was corrupted by resin.

Nakaya takes creatures, characters and motifs from traditional Japanese folklore, such as the mischievous tanuki (or racoon dog), and distorts and corrupts them into something more modern. His creations are expertly crafted, drawing on his background as a restoration craftsman, he restores these old relics and in turn gives these folklore creatures of the past a new lease of life with a modern twist.

I want to use this space to share some of my favorite works of his.

First up is his take on the daruma.

For those that don’t know what a daruma is; it’s a doll that symbolizes good luck which can often be bought from Buddhist temples. When bought, the eyes are usually left unpainted. It’s said that if you make a wish, you should paint the left eye with ink; and then once the wish is fulfilled you can paint the right eye.

I think the daruma doll is an interesting motif to glitch, especially with the pixel stretching effect that Nakaya uses. To me, it signifies that human tendency to procrastinate with our goals. That’s why the right eye is so stretched, as if to signify our extended timeline to finally paint that second eye. I also find it interesting how the colors are inverted from the traditional daruma doll and it makes me wonder what kind of dream was wished for.

Next his glitched and pixelated Fukusuke doll. The Fukusuke doll is another good luck charm, that is said to bring everlasting youth, wealth and honour.

The sculpture has become corrupted by Lego blocks

I really love how this ‘glitch’ looks in a physical sculpture because it reminds me a lot of a corrupted JPEG. It’s as though the plaster of the statue was somehow corrupted in the same way that one might change the hex code of a JPEG to achieve a similar look.

Another work that imitates glitches found in JPEGs is one of his glitch tanukis. A tanuki, known as racoon dog in English, is a major feature of Japanese folklore. The bake-danuki is a kind of yokai (a supernatural being) that takes the form of a tanuki. They can shapeshift and are often mischievous. Many shops or restaurants have a tanuki statue outside, which is often depicted with large testicles that he sometimes slings over his shoulder as a backpack, or uses as a drum. Not even Phil Collins can do that.

So back on to the artworks. Nakaya creates noise and compression artifacts using resin as the glitch. He has a whole bunch of glitch tanukis with various different ‘glitches’, but this is one of my favorites.

The last one I want to share is his maneki neko, or beckoning cat. Maybe a little more familiar to a western audience due to its ubiquitousness in U.S. Chinatowns, the maneki neko usually sits near the entrance of a business, and with its mechanical paw, beckons customers into an establishment.

His take on the maneki neko is to bend and warp the ceramic so that it looks like a distorted TV signal

I wonder what it is about these good luck icons that work so well when given the glitch treatment. In Western culture, there are many folktales or stories that focus on the corruption of luck or fortune. There’s the Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, or going back even earlier to the story of Faust. Looking through a western lens, and as someone who uses glitch art to subvert and corrupt cultural semiotics, I can’t help but project my own narrative on these sculptures.

I don’t want to share too many of his works through this newsletter, as I think it’s worth checking out his profile to see all of his works. I mostly focused on his fortune motifs, but he also has some wonderful warped and melted porcelain figures, chopped and broken renaissance paintings and frames, and a Darth Vader laughing Buddha.

So please please please go check out his IG profile at the link in the title, or you can also check out his website where you can also purchase some of his works

Tool Time: Video Library for Processing

Cast your mind all the way back to July of 2024, to Error Logs #8 (what do you mean you don’t remember, it was literally last month). You may recall that I did a primer tutorial on Processing for those who haven’t used it before. Now that we’ve gotten the beginner stuff out of the way, we can start looking at some of the scripts that we can use for making some cool looking glitches.

So, for this month’s script, we’re not going to be doing anything too extreme yet. Instead, we’re going to be looking at some of the scripts you can find in the Video Library, which is a bunch of scripts made by the founders of Processing. I guess you can think of these as Official Processing scripts, but you’ll need to download them yourself as they’re not part of the default download.

I’d actually downloaded and used a couple of these before on Processing 2. However, my webcam on my PC isn’t very good and the resolution came out looking terrible, so I’ve never really used them for any projects. However, this time around I hooked up my Pixel 6A to my PC and used that. 2 hours of faffing about trying to get the phone camera working later, and I was finally on track.

For this tutorial, I’m going to recommend you use Processing 4 as you can download the library directly in the program, and Processing 4 will allow you to connect an external camera if you want to, which didn’t seem to work with Processing 2. Make sure you have the latest version of Processing 4 because earlier versions don’t support the library.

Anyway, to download the library you just need head into the Library Manager and download it, just like this:

Once downloaded, the scripts should be saved wherever they’re downloaded by default (check your preferences to see where that is). Here’s mine - you should be able to find two folders:

Capture: Scripts that capture video directly from your camera

Movie: Scripts that work on video files

The Movie scripts are not that interesting and just do stuff like pixelize or sort the movie into individual frames. It’s the capture scripts that we’re all here for.

One downside about these scripts is that they don’t include any way to save the outputs, so you’ll need to add your own code if you’d like to do so. Luckily, I’ve done that for you so just copy and paste this code to the end of your script and then pressing any key will save the on-screen output.

void keyPressed() {
  // Define the folder name, file name, and file extension
  String folderName = "output_folder"; // Change this to your desired folder name
  String fileName = "slit_scan_image";  // Change this to your desired file name
  String fileExt = ".png";             // Change this to your desired file extension

  // Save the current canvas as an image with a unique name
  String timeStamp = nf(hour(), 2) + nf(minute(), 2) + nf(second(), 2);
  String uniqueFileName = folderName + "/" + fileName + "_" + timeStamp + fileExt;
  save(uniqueFileName);
  println("Saved as: " + uniqueFileName);
}

Also, If your built-in webcam isn’t great, and you want to use an external camera or your phone, replace this code

 video = new Capture(this,320, 240);

with this

 video = new Capture(this, width, height, Capture.list()[1]);

If you change [1] to different numbers, it will cycle through the cameras connected to your computer. If you want to check which capture devices are connected, use the GettingStartedCapture script in the Capture folder.

So, let’s take a look at some of the Capture scripts

First let’s take a look at FrameDifferencing. This script reminds me a lot of the music video for Soft Moon’s Total Decay.

I’m assuming this script highlights contours where the current frame is different from the previous frame. If you leave it capturing an empty room, then it will just output a black screen.

It works best when the subject is moving and highlights the contours with a kind neon looking colour. I think it might be overlaying a negative on top of the image as you can capture these kindly of ghostly trails if you move fast enough.

The second script we’re going to take a look at is Mirror 2, which creates this kind of tiled effect, which is kind of similar to the ASCII playground stuff I wrote about in Error Logs #2.

But, the four that I really like, and the ones have the most potential for glitch art are LivePocky, Time Displacement, Spatiotemporal and Slitscan.

LivePocky seems to record a line of pixels from each frame to add to the live caputure. As the live feed updates, it pushes each row of pixels upwards. So you can create some beautifully distorted monstrosities like the ones below.

According to the script itself: “Unwrap each frame of live video into a single line of pixels.”

Time Displacement is somewhat similar to LivePocky, but I guess it records more than one line of pixels at once so it updates the feed differently.

The description for this one tells me “Keeps a buffer of video frames in memory and displays pixel rows taken from consecutive frames distributed over the y-axis.“ So there you are.

Then you can run it through other glitching scripts, and you can come up with something really interesting.

Next on the list is spatiotemporal.

From what I can see, it performs a slit scan, and then plays it back so that a specific part of the capture gets played from left to right. So, in a regular slitscan, if you move your head from one side to the other, the final image show will show your face stretched from left to right. In the second part of this script, it shows your distorted head move from one side to another as though it’s capturing it live.

According to the script explanation; “Records a number of video frames into memory, then plays back the video buffer by turning the time axis into the x-axis and vice versa.” Indeed.

Finally, it’s the tried and tested slit scan. Old faithful herself. And this one is probably my favorite.

If you don’t know what a slit scan is, imagine it’s like the camera in a scanner which moves from one side to the other. Basically, it’s like putting a big sheet of paper with a slit in it in front of the thing you want to take a photo of (for example’s sake, let’s imagine it’s a life-sized cardboard cutout of Phil Collins playing his bongos) meaning you can only capture a tiny bit of Phil at a time. So, to capture him in his full glory, you have to move the paper and take individual photos with which to build a composite.

If you play around with it, you can do some cool stuff like this.

Then you can make cool body horror things like this.

Anyway, that’s all for another month. If you end up making anything with the Processing scripts, feel free to tag me in the comments - I’d love to see what you come up with.

If you’re not already subscribed and enjoyed this, please think about coming a subscriber. It helps me know that people are enjoying this and that I should continue makin’ ‘em.