Talk / Nagashima Room · E15-341

Splinter: Exploring the Cut-up Method with a Custom Screenshot Tool

With Arbor

A dense map of cut-out text boxes and flowchart pieces on black, with the word START repeated.

Arbor at a laptop in front of a projection.

Sunday, November 1, 20262:00–2:30 PM ET
Nagashima RoomE15-341 · MIT Media Lab

Splinter is a graphical expression system and free software tool which uses the screenshot paradigm as a medium of expression. Drawing from the cut-up method, the system operates on digital media, allowing users to quickly extract and recursively recompose media on screens onto a digital canvas.

This talk will peruse the recombinant media lineages of the cut-up and extend it to digital media through the screenshot. Then, using the interface as a performance, interaction with Splinter becomes a unique, generative, live audiovisual performance which expands the expressive possibilities of such software tools and challenges conventions around digital media in performance contexts.

Six photos of Arbor performing and presenting with Splinter: a silhouette before a colorful projection, a halftone figure with three eyes, a silhouette against a white projection, Arbor at a laptop before a wall of screenshots, and two views of him pointing at a screen of cut-up shapes in a room with red curtains.

About the presenter

Arbor is an artist and researcher creating immersive light experiences and novel interfaces. His works blur the boundaries between performance, installation, and artifact across diverse environments and contexts, and often yield new tools that serve as both means and forms of expression.

Splinter derrekchow.com