Jon Satrom

There is no topic for blog posts this week so I will speak on Jon Satrom.  In class we were asked to write a question we could ask Jon.  I had a great one but…almost the exact same question was asked by another member of the class.  My question that I had for Jon was in relation to sound in his work: “Does sound come about like the visual aspects of your work?  Is it mostly glitched sound you record or is it composed to sound like that?” Sound in many of his videos like “ROM 0” http://jonsatrom.com/---/rom0/index.html seem orchestrated in that they seem to match the visual glitch.  We know from using computers that glitches don’t make sound unless it’s during a video or music.  This particular video doesn't depict those two things so the music I had to assume was added later.  Jon did state that a lot of the sound is glitches but he does orchestrate it in a way by syncing it with certain images later on.  It results in a video that at first is jarring but later the sounds paired with the images are oddly satisfying.  I myself would get a bit of nostalgia for 8bit or even 16bit game sounds which his works seemed to have some references to.  They may not have been done consciously but a lot of the sounds reminded me of that.

            Jon’s talk in general really interested me.  Out of the different styles of internet art we have looked at I feel that glitch and remix are the most interesting to me.  It is interesting to take something that anyone could take for granted.  Something that is constantly being improved.  Something that people want to look nice and work and then doing the complete opposite with it.  It gives a look into what we use every day and take for granted as something familiar and turns it into something foreign and strange.  A good example of this in Jon’s work is the Satromizer OS https://vimeo.com/17414202.  It takes a hugely popular item and operating system and turns it into something completely different.  On the surface the OS looks like apple but as soon as you try to interact with it, it changes.  This is an incredibly clever idea.  It breaks down the normal walls of interaction and adds a whole new level.  It asks the question, how do we use something that is outside our normal comfort zone?  Depending on how you look at it, Satromizer is a working OS.  We aren't used to our operating systems operating in the way Satromizer OS does.  Therefore, it seems like it is broken but in reality it is doing exactly what it was designed to do.  I think this is an incredibly interesting look at perception and how we perceive something in technology as working or not.

            The question on perception and something doing something it was designed to do or not do is what interested me most about Jon’s talk.  I think it is a fundamental question that glitch art and even remix art asks.