something_transcendent_01

What people may not appreciate who haven't explored glitch art very much is how thrilling it can be when you're mid-process. The early stages is learning tools, finding raw material maybe, doing some code or soldering or something - brainstorming a new technique maybe. The middle stage is when you've found something new - you've discovered landscapes of pixels that no one has seen before - you've processed something that cranked out a warped stage that no one has walked on, no one has shared. The colors and the waves and pixels can be overwhelming, and you know that right in this moment at least no other eyes have ever seen what is on your screen right now. ASDF as an algorithm is interesting because while it gets more predictable the more you use it - it still surprises you when you input a certain color combination or a certain shape or noise complexity or something. Maybe that comes with barely grasping the inner workings of it (other sorting algorithms seem easier to get a handle on) - but it's almost like emergent patterns that you try to seek out rather than plan. So what was provided that was needed here is, - for example - the staggered wave pattern on the circle. You can kind of predict how to drag values far enough into the red that it will produce totally bent waves, or how to keep the values safe enough it produces drifted pixels, but finding something like that where it almost feels like old-world marbling still feels surprising to me.

The need for something transcendent is probably one of the more controversial needs I think I have, that maybe other people share. Tolstoy pointed out in his later life that he was surprised learned people believe we can do away with transcendent ideas, that historically people had not lived that way in any place or time. I'm phrasing it this way on purpose too - "something transcendent" - since I believe that people everywhere may or may not believe in any particular purpose or overarching reality or transcendental like beauty or goodness, but that they cannot live as if those things don't exist. I think people who find themselves in a vacuum will take whatever value sounds best (maybe freedom, or brotherhood, or equality) and make those into ideas that function essentially the same as religion did for people that came before them.

When I use "something transcendent" here, it's a double reference to the artwork and to my actual needs. The artwork often needs the astonishing revelation of some new digital creation that I didn't plan. Myself: I need to have some overarching transcendent purpose or value or reality, because living otherwise seems fit for animals (in the insulting sense, not in the literal "of course we are also animals and animals have rights" sense), but not for whatever human beings are. So what is that worthy thing? What is transcendent that seems worthwhile? That part might be beyond me, but I'm aware of the need.