A tribe on Facebook called Electronically Yours set out with a challenge to its team members – create a glitch track in one hour. Those who undertook the challenge had to make the song, mix and master within the timeframe and then send it to the gamemaster, who in this case happens to be one of the members of Swedish electro act Covenant.

After the voting process was over the tribe was so happy with the outcome that it was decided to release it on all major streaming platforms. Below you can listen in to all the contributions:

If you are proficient in Swedish you can read the associated press release below:

As with many challenges the gamemaster of course had a reference track that to him embodied the essence of glitch and in this case it was Ryoji Ikeda’s track data.matrix.

Dataplex was Ryoji Ikeda’s first full-length release since his 2002’s orchestral Op. It is the first part in the Datamatics series, which “interrogates and interprets the mass of raw computer data surrounding us all.”^[Over all, it is the musician’s seventh solo album. The last track “data.adaplex” contains playback errors.

Using pure data as a source for sound and visuals, datamatics combines abstract and mimetic presentations of matter, time and space. datamatics is the second audiovisual concert in the datamatics series. Projecting dynamic computer-generated imagery in pared down black and white with striking colour accents, the intense yet minimal graphic renderings of data progress through multiple dimensions. From 2D sequences of patterns derived from hard drive errors and studies of software code, the imagery transforms into dramatic rotating views of the universe in 3D, whilst in the final scenes four-dimensional mathematical processing opens up spectacular and seemingly infinite vistas. A powerful and hypnotic soundtrack reflects the imagery through a meticulous layering of sonic components to produce immense and apparently boundless acoustic spaces.

datamatics [ver 2.0] is the full–length version of this audiovisual concert. With a commissioned second part added, datamatics [ver.2.0] is significantly developed from the earlier version of this piece which premiered in March 2006. Driven by the primary principles of datamatics, but objectively deconstructing its original elements – sound, visuals and even source codes – this work creates a kind of meta–datamatics. Real–time program computations and data scanning are employed to create an extended new sequence that is a further abstraction of the original work. The technical dynamics of the piece, such as its extremely fast frame rates and variable bit depths, continue to challenge and explore the thresholds of our perceptions.