Rosa Menkman

Every technology possesses its own inherent accidents. Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist/theorist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in both analogue and digital media. The visuals she makes are the result of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise. Although many people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, Menkman emphasizes their positive consequences.

By combining both her practical as well as her academic background, Menkman merges her abstract pieces within a grand theory artifacts (a glitch studies). Besides the creation of a formal "Vernacular of File Formats", within her static work, she also create work in her Acousmatic Videoscapes. In these Videoscapes she strives to connect both sound and video artifacts conceptually, technically and sometimes narratively.

Benchmarking is the process of establishing a point of reference against which for instance a certain output can be measured. Traditionally, benchmarking is done in reference to "best practices".
But what happens when when instead of choosing "best practices" as a point of reference, we chose an unreasonable benchmark? What can we expect from these deranged logics at work?

Benchmarking the Deranged

Video Scape / Xilitla

In this new work, named Xilitla, we find a disembodied Janus-headed entity through which the player can navigate a surrealist place partially inspired by Xilitla (an equally confusing, surreal sculpture garden in Mexico). Video-textures are neither analogue nor digital and navigation is neither forward nor backward; confusion is key.

'While most glitch art, by definition, gives you the sensations of disjointedness and disorientation through manipulating the color and geometry of the familiar, Rosa Menkman takes familiarity nearly out of the equation with her intensely twisted worlds. Disturbing as these visuals can be, you can easily freeze and zone out on any one of them for unspecified periods of time.'
Abdullah Saeed September 07, 2012, for the Creators Project