Michael Betancourt - Noise As Signal: The AImaglitch Movies

The problem of AI and art is one which dominates much of the modern discourse, with thinkpieces published daily by journalists, academics, artists, activists and advocates arguing the horrors, viability, toxicity, possible benefits and and most questionable of all, the future of this most controversial tool and its profound and strange implications. A common theme amongst this troubled discourse is the potential it has to “break” – thanks to AI, truth is “broken”, society is “broken”, art is “broken.” The picture painted by these takes is of an unstoppable force destroying all in its path, a bull in a cultural china shop. All this suggests however, that if AI breaks art, what art can be gleaned where AI is broken? 

Film theorist and video artist Michael Betancourt has been among the foremost practitioners of “glitch art” for over three decades. Glitch explores the images which can be gleaned from the…