chapter 3 - glitch
In our digital world, where streaming is such a favoured means of watching and listening, the digital glitch is an unwitting but minor complication that we accept as consequence of what we consider to be our digital aesthetic. In his article, ‘Glossing over Thoughts on Glitch. A Poetry of Error’, glitch artist Jeffrey Donaldson posits that;
“[glitch] 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.” (N.D.).
With seemingly rapid speed, glitch has made the transition from merely being accepted as an unavoidable coding error to being remodelled as a purposely-produced aesthetic that has, eventually, materialised as an art object – glitch aesthetics. Seemingly, the glitch aesthetic is the twenty-first century equivalent of the aesthetics of failure which sought to obstruct that which was deemed as indicative of an aesthetically congenial world. If, then, the aesthetics of failure disrupt the art of the early-twentieth century, then glitch aesthetics are a disruptive artefact of our digital culture and, whether intentional or purposely composed, is a consequence (or representative of a consequence) of error and miscommunication. Glitches, then, have become a commodity within themselves and can be easily digitally recreated to convey a narrative of their own as an art form that illustrates chaos – a contemporary theme that is fitting within the current economic, social and political climate. Consequently, and almost without comment, glitch aesthetics have gained prominence as a well-used trope in popular culture as well as having stimulated a (seemingly) sudden art movement that is celebrating its own arrival. In the decades that have passed between the original Twin Peaks and its 2017 revival, both media and aesthetic research has undergone a substantial paradigm shift. David Lynch, in Twin Peaks: The Return[1] embraces this vicissitude and illustrates explicitly how the digital can be manipulated to mimic physical world errors that aim to induce a disorienting and frustrating affect upon both the inhabitants of Twin Peaks and the viewer; here, the glitch finds its spiritual home. In the original seasons of Twin Peaks and in FWWM, electricity is an overt medium which David Lynch uses to depict and disrupt the recognisable but somewhat uncanny town of Twin Peaks. Electric lights glitch and flicker in a way which illustrates that ‘something’ is broken but that also provides a visual method of, literally, keeping the viewer in the dark. While the errant narrative devices that occupy FWWM and the original seasons of Twin Peaks remain as recognisable tropes in the 2017 reboot, Lynch also heavily incorporates the concept of the digital glitch that reflects the digital era to the extent to which we now inhabit it. In this chapter, I will hopefully illustrate a deep understanding of the nuances of glitch aesthetics as well as approaching the glitch aesthetic within The Return by exploring its “ghostly conventionality” (Goriumnova and Shulgin, 2008, p. 114).
The Return
As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, digital glitches can be purposely produced to form a piece of art or, in the case of David Lynch’s The Return, form part of a larger narrative. Glitch artist Rosa Menkman offers her thoughts on why glitch aesthetics, specifically, can augment an existing cultural artefact; “The artist tries to catch something that is the result of an uncertain balance, a shifting, un-catchable, unrealized utopia connected to randomness and idyllic disintegrations” (Menkman, 2010). If, then, we consider the scene in part three (‘Call for Help’, 28th May) in which Agent Dale Cooper (or some version of) attempts to leave the Black Lodge and the visuals in the scene falter and time seems to move at unnatural, and varying, speeds (00:00:00 – 00:17:10) and, actually, seems to be, rather, a random series of occurrences happening simultaneously only tied together by the constant presence (or viewpoint) of Dale Cooper. In this, Lynch cultivates an effect akin to Menkman’s philosophy by aiming to capture/create something that is ‘other-worldly’ or, if not for Lynch’s post-production techniques, an otherwise ‘un-catchable’ representation of a scene. Throughout the works of David Lynch, each small glitch, movement and sound is purposely produced – there are not mistakes even if that is the effect that has been produced. As Cooper passes through this glitch-heavy quasi-limbo world, the central aesthetic is one of frustration and while the elements of the scene are recognisable elements, the audio ‘skips’ and crackles as the image flickers, manifesting as an erroneous but recognisable semi-dream reality; a trope that permeates the entire series and is, often, generated by glitches. As such, and because of the effect it produces, the glitch aesthetic is a popular trope within the horror genre and, subsequently, so-called ‘glitch gothic’ has become a sub-genre of its own and has been used as a narrative device in many recent ‘found-footage’ movies. Mark Olivier coined the term, ‘Glitch Gothic’, in a 2015 piece in Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era and argues that the errant digital aesthetic is not an unfamiliar trope in horror; “The jarring spectacle of data ruins is becoming to the twenty-first century what the crumbling mansion was to gothic literature of the nineteenth century: the privileged space for confrontations with incompatible systems, nostalgic remnants, and restless revenants.” (Olivier, 2015, p. 253). David Lynch heavily employs this technique of glitch or data disruption to enhance the horror affect in The Return (2017). Whilst the original Twin Peaks series’ and FWWM incorporated electricity and noise as a source of horror and disruption, in the decades that have passed, data and its inevitable ‘glitching’ have become much more prominent features of our digital culture (through streaming and corrupt data) and Lynch uses this aesthetic to further disrupt the universe within The Return.
TV Dinners
The figure of the television is a common trope in Lynch’s work (see chapter 1), and in The Return, the television in the Palmer house seems itself to reference the errant media form. In chapter one of this paper I posited that the Palmer residence acts a host for errant violations and, while two of its residents no longer live there, the remaining resident, Sarah Palmer, is still plagued by glitches (through audio and aesthetic mediums). In part 13, as Sarah sits excessively drinking and smoking, she is ostensibly haunted by the trauma (or something else) she has suffered. The old-style (seemingly black and white, but this could just be the particular video) television plays a glitched loop of a vintage boxing match that is periodically recapitulated when the sports commentator says “now it’s a boxing match again” followed by an electric glitch sound which, oddly, seems to be played from somewhere other than the television despite its concurrent place in the glitch [00:47: 27 – 00:50:11]. The effect of this prolonged scene (that contains very little action to further the plot) forces the viewer sit and wait out the looping with little respite, waiting for ‘something’ to happen but (until the next scene) it doesn’t. The viewer, faced with the bleak scene of what has become of the widowed, dead girl’s mother is unable to distance themselves from the entrails of mortality, and the effect is purely Lacanian;
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These horrors are terrible precisely because they are inexplicable, because they are fears we cannot verbalize or recognize that have been shunted off into narratives where we can look at them and experience their gazes as the horrors of the movie, not the horrors with us. (Benson-Allott, p. 11).
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The irony of the television being used as the instrument of glitch is not lost on anybody who is familiar with the humour contained with Lynch’s work. Unlike previous seasons of the show, The Return was aired on Showtime and was (and still is) available to stream immediately. Whilst largely taken as a key step in technological evolution, streaming television and film is not (yet) a medium without error; often streaming a show or film will be interrupted by buffering issues, skipping or displaced audio. In fact, Showtime currently faces legal challenges over the streaming problems faced by customers who paid to access a recent and much-anticipated boxing match (Bieler, 2017). Lynch, here, predicts the [almost] inevitable disturbance within the medium. As the series progresses the glitch occurrences become more overt and unashamed. In episode eleven (‘There's Fire Where you are Going’, 23rd July), FBI agents Gordon Cole (David Lynch) and Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) visit a site they suspect leads to the Black Lodge. Upon finding this, Gordon Cole looks to the sky and immediately a vortex appears (00:11:42) which begins to envelop some physical traces of Cole as he glitches between the ‘real world’ and, assumedly, the Black Lodge. Interestingly, the scene is seen from multiple viewpoints and each shows varying levels of ‘glitching’; from the viewpoint of Albert, Cole’s movements are blurred while subtle electricity crackles [00:12:27] but then are increasingly jerky and slow as he fades in and out of view [00:13:18]. Conversely, though the downward facing view (from the perspective of the vortex) of Cole shows him moving at a normal speed but he is blurred and accompanied by a thunderous noise [00:12:04]. This scene presents a third point-of-view and in this stylised long-shot, he is seemingly waving his hands at nothing and no vortex appears and the only noise heard is birds [00:12:45]. While this protracted glitch technique is more obviously purposeful, it is an unfamiliar aesthetic that differs from the glitches that are familiar in ‘found-footage’ horror films where a ‘ghost’ or ‘corpse’ image is quickly flashed on the screen [almost a visual assault] and is used to surprise or scare the viewer; Lynch, however, utilises his own Lynchian mode of expression in order to confuse and frustrate. Certainly in the plot of the show, and as is made explicit in this particular scene, glitches serve as the distinction and/or portals between landscapes.
This distinction also frequently occurs in digital glitch aesthetics; glitches serve as a (un)happy medium between what is perfect/digital and what is imperfect/analog – David Lynch (as director, not Cole) implements the glitch in this context to further subvert what is rational. Lynch is not merely inserting glitches to ‘make-weird’ an already weird scene, but his character is literally standing between what is ‘real’ and what exists ‘in the cloud[s]’. While these scenes containing glitches are ripe for lengthy psychoanalytical analysis (and I have aimed to resist in doing so), some of the glitch occurrences are subtle enough for the viewer to either miss or blame on unintentional error. In The Return, part two (‘The Stars Turn and a Time Presents Itself’, 2017), Agent Dale Cooper’s ‘evil’ doppelganger (referred to from here on in as ‘Mr C’) shoots Phyllis Hastings (Cornelia Guest) (00:07:01). The image is very subtly distorted which not only illustrates the odd temporality of Mr C’s existence but could easily be mistaken for an error in the media – Lynch is purposely inviting the viewer to question what they may or may not have seen and the uninitiated may even believe it to be a post-production error which as we have established earlier, seems unlikely. While too prevalent to list exhaustively here, these digital glitches can be found, both subtly and explicitly, throughout the entire series, and not only does it obviously signal to the viewer that the world of Twin Peaks is not as it seems, but it also references the flaws of its own medium.
In digital culture, much like academic and theoretical writing, the shifting of our temporal paradigms prevent a complete narrative. Admirably, glitch aesthetics (and its artists) celebrate the unfulfillable nature of our cultural paradigm and, when purposely produced, glitches illustrate and challenge the vulnerability of digital culture, or, “question the technology itself and the wired world we live in” (‘Mathieu St-Pierre!’ 2014); the world and our digital cultural artefacts are easily corruptible. Whilst once a niche sect of the avant-garde art movement, glitch is now a popular and commercialised trope that can be found in many popular horror films, video games and popular music videos and abandons its own power of defamiliarisation. Ray Brassier suggests that, at once, when any avant-garde aesthetic movement (which is what I have suggested ‘glitch aesthetics’ is) becomes a commodity that exists in mainstream and is subjected to convention and reproducibility, it loses its own ability to disrupt (‘Genre is Obsolete’, 2007). The rising popularity of such a disruptive art form at such a time of political, ecological and social upheaval is no coincidence, as John Berger reminds us; “we never look just at one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.” (2008, p. 9). However, I would propose that the techniques that Lynch uses in The Return to generate what exists unquestionably within the genre of glitch aesthetics, still have the ability to disrupt and transgress. While still operating the quintessential Lynchian theme of the disturbed American Dream, The Return is propelled emphatically into the digital, and Lynch uses this to further make-weird his fictional world. As I have hopefully shown throughout this chapter, Lynch achieves this generated ‘glitch aesthetic’ by not aiming to shock, but by implementing the glitch without comment or explanation, and merely leaving the viewer to accept what is taking place – it is the job of the viewer to interpret the aesthetic.