Infinite Input Output
Infinite Input Output is a collaborative printed publication about visual + audio noise, feedback loops, analog technology, and experimental media. This project aims to celebrate and connect artists working in these areas and the communities supporting them.
Our first volume will be independently published in New York by Rathaus Press and released globally in early 2025.
Project Updates
Stay tuned for more project updates!
✺ Noise, feedback, loops, recursion, chaos, distortion, glitches
✺ Analog, obsolete, rejected, and/or discarded technology
✺ Collaboration, community building through art
✺ Creative experimentation, challenging conventional ideas about art-making, DIY ethos
Inspiration, Readings + Other Inputs
Glitch Studies Manifesto (2009)
by Rosa Menkman
A manifesto celebrating new opportunities for using imperfections in media
“Get away from the established action scripts and join the avant-garde of the unknown. Become a nomad of noise artifacts! The static, linear notion of information-transmission can be interrupted on three occasions: during encoding-decoding (compression), feedback or when a glitch (an unexpected break within the flow of technology) occurs. Noise artists must exploit these noise artifacts and explore the new opportunities they provide.”
by Rosa Menkman
A manifesto celebrating new opportunities for using imperfections in media
Quote
“Get away from the established action scripts and join the avant-garde of the unknown. Become a nomad of noise artifacts! The static, linear notion of information-transmission can be interrupted on three occasions: during encoding-decoding (compression), feedback or when a glitch (an unexpected break within the flow of technology) occurs. Noise artists must exploit these noise artifacts and explore the new opportunities they provide.”
I Am a Strange Loop (2007)
by Douglas Hofstadter
A book about consciousness, self-referential systems, and internal feedback loops
“Feedback — making a system turn back or twist back on itself, thus forming some kind of mystically taboo loop — seems to be dangerous, seems to be tempting fate, perhaps even to be intrinsically wrong, whatever that might mean … Making representations of one’s own self is seen as suspicious, weird, and perhaps ultimately fatal. This suspicion of loops just runs in our human grain, it would seem.”
by Douglas Hofstadter
A book about consciousness, self-referential systems, and internal feedback loops
Quote
“Feedback — making a system turn back or twist back on itself, thus forming some kind of mystically taboo loop — seems to be dangerous, seems to be tempting fate, perhaps even to be intrinsically wrong, whatever that might mean … Making representations of one’s own self is seen as suspicious, weird, and perhaps ultimately fatal. This suspicion of loops just runs in our human grain, it would seem.”
Glitch Art and Dirty New Media (2013)
Interview with Jon Cates by Una Dimitrijevic
An interview with Jon Cates about the ideas behind dirty new media
“I would say it’s best to approach [new media and glitch art] with curiosity and openness: be open to surprise; to see errors differently, as moments of possibility rather than events to be avoided; and to hear noise as a creative act of musical expression.”
Interview with Jon Cates by Una Dimitrijevic
An interview with Jon Cates about the ideas behind dirty new media
Quote
“I would say it’s best to approach [new media and glitch art] with curiosity and openness: be open to surprise; to see errors differently, as moments of possibility rather than events to be avoided; and to hear noise as a creative act of musical expression.”
Ways of Hearing Episode Six: NOISE (2017)
by Damon Krukowski
A podcast episode about the shift from analog to digital communications, and the resulting difference between a world enriched by noise, and a world that strives toward signal only
“Throughout the series, my aim has ben to call attention to aspects of sound we may not always think about. You might say, I’ve been trying to highlight different parts of the noise around us and that’s because it’s my hope that by listening to a wider swathe of noise, we might discover more about what is meaningful signal for each of us and how we might best share those signals with one another.”
by Damon Krukowski
A podcast episode about the shift from analog to digital communications, and the resulting difference between a world enriched by noise, and a world that strives toward signal only
Quote
“Throughout the series, my aim has ben to call attention to aspects of sound we may not always think about. You might say, I’ve been trying to highlight different parts of the noise around us and that’s because it’s my hope that by listening to a wider swathe of noise, we might discover more about what is meaningful signal for each of us and how we might best share those signals with one another.”
Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961)
by John Cage
A collection of essays and lectures by avant-garde composer John Cage
"Would we ever be able to get so that we thought the ugly sounds were beautiful? If we drop beauty, what have we got? Have we got truth?"
by John Cage
A collection of essays and lectures by avant-garde composer John Cage
Quote
"Would we ever be able to get so that we thought the ugly sounds were beautiful? If we drop beauty, what have we got? Have we got truth?"
Artifacts (1980)
by Woody Vasulka
A video art piece in which Woody Vasulka experiments with constructing and deconstructing digital visual imagery
"By artifacts, I mean that I have to share the creative process with the machine. It is responsible for too many elements in this work. These images come to you as they came to me — in a spirit of exploration."
by Woody Vasulka
A video art piece in which Woody Vasulka experiments with constructing and deconstructing digital visual imagery
Quote
"By artifacts, I mean that I have to share the creative process with the machine. It is responsible for too many elements in this work. These images come to you as they came to me — in a spirit of exploration."
Expanded Cinema (1970)
by Gene Youngblood
A book that helped establish media art as a cultural category
by Gene Youngblood
A book that helped establish media art as a cultural category
Quote
“On the one hand, intermedia environments turn the participant inward upon himself, providing a matrix for psychic exploration, perceptual, censorial, and intellectual awareness; on the other hand technology has advanced to the point at which the whole earth itself becomes the ‘content’ of aesthetic activity.“Waveform and Synapse (1974–76)
by Al Razutis
Excerpts from two videos using human bio-feedback to create live visuals
“... I pursued bio-feedback experiments with the intent to use my brainwaves, heartbeat, and respiration readings as voltage controls for video effects and image transformations.”
by Al Razutis
Excerpts from two videos using human bio-feedback to create live visuals
Quote
“... I pursued bio-feedback experiments with the intent to use my brainwaves, heartbeat, and respiration readings as voltage controls for video effects and image transformations.”
Cracking Ray Tubes: Reanimating Analog Video in a Digital Context (2014)
by James Connolly and Kyle Evans
A paper about using analog and digital technology to create new sonic and visual experiences, and the use of obsolete technology to to challenge modern material culture
“Our analog explorations, in fleeting and perpetually shifting moments of electronic visual noise, interrupt the passivity of the ritual of sitting before a screen, revealing the seemingly alchemic nature of analog materiality in the digital era.”
by James Connolly and Kyle Evans
A paper about using analog and digital technology to create new sonic and visual experiences, and the use of obsolete technology to to challenge modern material culture
Quote
“Our analog explorations, in fleeting and perpetually shifting moments of electronic visual noise, interrupt the passivity of the ritual of sitting before a screen, revealing the seemingly alchemic nature of analog materiality in the digital era.”
Video’s Body, Analog and Digital (2000)
by Laura U. Marks
An essay about the body of analog and digital video and the state of of human bodies in these analog and digital worlds
“How does analog video perceive the world and use its body to communicate? How do this perception and communication change in digital video? How do our own perceiving bodies respond to each medium?”
by Laura U. Marks
An essay about the body of analog and digital video and the state of of human bodies in these analog and digital worlds
Quote
“How does analog video perceive the world and use its body to communicate? How do this perception and communication change in digital video? How do our own perceiving bodies respond to each medium?”
Rembobine, avance, vidéo séance: Fifty Years of feed-back (2021)
by Sam Meech
An essay about technological analogical experimentation in video art
“Artistic technological innovation comes not from working within permitted uses and expected workflows, but by expanding the potential of technology through direct misuse and unconventional configurations. It means looking backward as well as forward, in order to revisit missed opportunities for experimentation from a new frame of reference.”
by Sam Meech
An essay about technological analogical experimentation in video art
Quote
“Artistic technological innovation comes not from working within permitted uses and expected workflows, but by expanding the potential of technology through direct misuse and unconventional configurations. It means looking backward as well as forward, in order to revisit missed opportunities for experimentation from a new frame of reference.”
MR NOISE: BEAUTIFUL NOISE (1967–68)
by Lee Harrison
Animated video clips by scanimate inventor Lee Harrison
by Lee Harrison
Animated video clips by scanimate inventor Lee Harrison