I Am Sitting in a Room

Antonio Roberts (1985 - )

video, uncompressed 10bit QuickTime file (master)

2010

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection

    As stated by Antonio Roberts: ’In glitch art we only ever see the result of the process of damaging an image, video or sound. Rarely can we observe this process as it happens within the computer in an instant. Using Alvin Lucier's 1969 piece I Am Sitting in a Room as inspiration, in this piece I show the many steps taken to damage data to the point where it loses all meaning.’


    ‘Font files are files that attribute a style to the otherwise plain text that we see on screen. The computer treats this only as an attribute of the text and can understand it regardless of what font file is used or how it looks to the viewer. In this piece, I have used a script that explores the font file and damages it by randomising the values that construct each glyph. […] The resulting video shows the gradual damaging of the data. The viewer will struggle to find meaning amongst the visual noise whilst the computer still understands.’

  • About the artist
    Antonio Roberts is a new media artist and curator based in Birmingham, working in the areas of glitch art, installation art and live coding performance, with themes around open-source software, free culture and copyright. He was awarded a BOM Fellowship in 2016, a Near Now Fellowship in 2017, and the New Art Gallery Walsall Stay at Home Residency, 2020; and commissioned for Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2020 supported by the Arts Council England and GREAT campaign. He has presented work internationally since 2014, including at TRANSFER Gallery, New York (2014, 2016); Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago (2014); Tate Britain (2015, 2016); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); Project Space, Venice, Italy (2017); V&A, London (2017, 2019); Barbican, London (2017, 2018); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2018); and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2019).
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    Subjects
    Materials & Techniques
    digital video, video, QuickTime file format, digital master
  • Details
    Artist
    Antonio Roberts (1985 - )
    Title
    I Am Sitting in a Room
    Date
    2010
    Medium
    video, uncompressed 10bit QuickTime file (master)
    Dimensions
    36 seconds
    Acquisition
    Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21
    Provenance
    The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 22 March 2021
    GAC number
    18980