tag: Interview

The latest issue of Elephant Magazine is out and is focused on brands and copyright:

I’m With The Brand

Are brands out to get us? Could our food, sartorial, satirical and political choices now all be considered as brand alliances? Most importantly, do we secretly really love the idea of being defined in this way?

In Issue 27 Elephant investigates the paradoxical relationship that a host of the art world’s new generation of makers have with brands. We meet Chloe Wise, Antonio Roberts, Jemma Egan, Holly White and Rachel Maclean to discuss the changing face of branding and the rise of subliminal messaging.

Following the opening of the Common Property exhibition at Jerwood Visual Arts I was interviewed by Filippo Lorenzin about the exhibition and my views on copyright in general. On 8th February this interview was published on the Furtherfield website.

I think Copyright as a whole is in a terrible state. As Cory Doctorow suggests in the exhibition programme (which is in itself an excerpt from his book “Information Doesn’t want to be Free”) Copyright as we know it isn’t written for artists or any individual. Its verbose terms and complexities cannot be understood and are probably not even read by most of us. They are written for other lawyers. If, in order to go about our creative business, we are expected to read and understand the terms and conditions and law - it is estimated that it would take 76 days to read all of the Ts and Cs of websites we use - what time do we have to be creative?

On 20th January a-n published an article/interview/writeup with myself, Hannah Pierce and Owne G Parry. The article focuses on the Common Property exibition and more broadly asks for our thoughts on the state of Copyright. One excerpts from Hannah Pierce discussing the motivation behind the exhibition:

“I remember going through art school and never at any point having any conversations around copyright or what it meant to be working with somebody else’s image. I was really interested by this lack of knowledge that we have; I thought that a really good way to work that out would be through a show.”

Early in 2015, off the back of my appearance at the Loud Tate: Code event, Rosemary Kirton interviewed me for an online magazine. Sadly that magazine is no longer online and the interview was never published. With her permission I’m posting it below. Some of what is said is now irrelevant or old, but it was such a great interview that I just had to share it.

Interview with Rosemary Kirton

Antonio Roberts, currently based in Birmingham, UK, talks to [redacted] about his work as a Glitch artist, and how meaningful it is to him and for our digital posterity, to share this knowledge with the public.

I recently did an interview with Neon Vice about my work and motivations behind some of my recent pieces.

Have a read ‘cause, y’know, it’s interesting… or read it below.

How do you explain what you do to people who are unfamiliar with glitch art and how would you define it on a personal level?

I first tell the uninitiated that my art practice is about breaking stuff! There is obviously more to it, but drawing comparisons to broken TVs and corrupt jpgs usually gives people an idea of how this art manifests itself visually.

Back in December 2013 I did an interview with Emily Pickthall from Tribe Magazine. Sometime around May in 2014 it was finally published in issue 28 of the online magazine. Below is the full interview. Enjoy!

(images and links added by me)

Antonio Roberts first spliced a name for himself at the international GLI.TC/H festival which emerged in Chicago, expanding to include cities from Amsterdam to Birmingham, where Roberts is currently based. Screening his breakthrough video piece ‘I am Sitting in a Room’ at the 2010 festival, Roberts generated a significant profile for himself both online and in then emergent circles of hacktivism, dirty media and noise artists.

Here’s one that I nearly forgot to share. Back in June I was part of the Glitch Moment/ums exhibition at Furtherfield. I was there to perform at the opening, where they also shot a lil’ video that includes me waving my arms around franticly talking about some glitch stuff:

You can read some of Rosa Menkman’s thoughts behind the exhibition in this interview with we make money not art:

Whilst out in Arles for Databit.me I did a short interview with David LePôle about my time at Databit.me, glitch art, my inspirations, and contemporary art. You can also see a bit of me delivering a Pure Data workshop.

Thanks to Belka for filming it!

I was recently interviewed by Jamie Boulton for his final-year dissertation. He is currently studying Visual Communication at Birmingham City University, where he’s recently become very interested in glitch art. Below is the whole interview, with links and pictures added by me.

First of all, what is your definition of a glitch?

A glitch is an error or something unexpected.

How did you first come in contact with glitch art? What were your initial impressions of it and what made you pursue it as an art form?

Shortly after GLI.TC/H hit Birmingham I did a short interview with Jonathan Melhuish for the Redbrick, Birmingham University’s newspaper.

Jonathan Melhuish: So, what is “glitch art”?

Antonio: Glitch art is making art out of analogue or digital errors. It can bemade using computers using techniques like attempting to open animage in a text editor or with physical objects, like opening up electronic toys andpoking around at its circuitry until you achieve odd and unexpectedresults.

I was interviewed by Imperica recently about GLI.TC/H coming to Birmingham.

For the viewer, appreciating Glitch art inevitably depends on the form that the work takes, and an understanding of the work not being “broken” but a new construction in itself. Glitched artwork “… can be beautiful, but it can also be chaotically noisy. It isn’t just an hour of TV static or hard noise. They have a narrative; they tell a story in some way. I want the viewer to see the value in things that are corrupted, bent, and broken.”