Jeffrey F Donaldson
580 California St., Suite 400
San Francisco, CA, 94104
"gLossing Over Thoughts On Glitch -A Poetry of Error"
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Abstract
In the past 10 years a proliferation of visual work that embraces the style of digital error has crept into mainstream advertising and popular culture. Recent and ongoing events such as GLI.T/CH in Chicago and Bent Festival in New York City have helped to establish an international dialogue for artists working in this digital underground. As more institutions begin to recognize glitch as an art form and more people begin to theorize its relevance, we must ask, where is the genre heading and where has it been? /////AN UNANTICIPATED ART In our modern, networked world, the glitch is everywhere. A dropped phone call, a dropped frame during a televised broadcast, and the Windows operating system's "Blue Screen of Death" are all examples anyone working with technology has experienced as our tools of communication and entertainment have progressed into the digital realm. As a result of this paradigm shift, the errors of our instruments have taken on a new character; analog static has been replaced with digital precision. We have accepted this new imperfection into our everyday lives as a byproduct of progress and have welcomed it as the personal computer has steadily replaced what is now old media. Where there were once neon lights there are now display panels wired to present the latest in high definition commercial advertisement. As the natural elements erode the electronics, these new displays fragment into colourful, geometric forms, sometimes retaining their original content, sometimes creating entirely new images. A bad electrical contact or an improperly connected cable is enough to elicit novel geometric forms. This broken visual landscape is omnipresent, familiar to anyone living in our urban environments and to those who are paying attention, a new form of readymade machine art surrounds us. Conventionally, a glitch is an error. It is a break from an algorithmic flow. Its unanticipated appearance simultaneously frustrating and mesmerizing. But a glitch uncovers another ordering principle. It is chance made manifest and a spontaneous reordering of data, like the wave function collapse of quantum theory. In its pure, wild sense, a glitch is the ghost in the machine, the other side of intention, a form that is hidden until it manifests itself of its own accord. It is a true type of machine art and a crude form of artificial intelligence inasmuch that once an algorithm is let go to run free, due to the architecture of digital systems, a break from routine creates an ordering of its own. The pixel grid of the computer display provides the framework and serves as the canvas for this manifested algorithmic hiccup. It's as if the computer is freed from its normal task and instead displays what it wants, the architecture of the electronics giving shape to sudden random