The glitch aesthetic as narrative
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By definition, a glitch is supposed to be inadvertent, a fault in the machine – an indicator that along the way there has been a miscommunication. The output of which is an unpredictable and unintentional commodity. From this, artists, across several disciplines, have found ways to recreate the chaos and unpredictability of the glitch, rendering it completely re-creatable and, ergo, neither chaotic nor unpredictable. This, however, is not to diminish Glitch art as an aesthetic or cultural artifact and, as I hope to illustrate in this short video, glitch, whether intentional or not, can forge a narrative within itself or amongst other mediums.
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digital aesthetic
Iman Moradi, an early academic writing about Glitch aesthetics, makes the distinction between what he calls ‘pure’ and ‘glitch-alike’ art forms. Pure glitches are the unavoidable accidental glitches that occur as a miscommunication in a digital process and ‘glitch-alike’ instances are purposely created. The formation of the Glitch Aesthetic has gained much momentum in the past five to ten years and the raising popularity has seen artists across many genres adopt the glitch aesthetic and apply it to their works. In video, when a digital artist intentionally ‘glitches’ the moving image, it is called ‘datamoshing. This concept with utilized and applied by director Nabil Elderkin in Kanye West’s 2009 music video, ‘Welcome to Heartbreak’ and creates an illusion of incorrectly rendered visuals. This technique was later taken up and heavily referenced and represented in Young Jake’s self-directed and aptly named, ‘Datamosh’ (2011). As previously mentioned, Glitch is an aesthetic that transcends disciplines and Glitch music is a genre of its own. This style of music is heavily influenced by Luigi Russolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto, The Art of Noises and is one of the most prominent art forms that identifies as post-digital. Russolo proposed in his manifesto, life, before the industrial revolution was silent, accompanied only by sounds found in nature. Russolo put forth that the audio landscape was now accompanied by the sounds of an industrialized world and thus, music should move away from trying to recreate the Kantian sublime and, instead, push to capture the landscape of a modern, industrial world. Many music artists took the ideas of Russolo throughout the twentieth century and created what can be referred to as ‘noise music’. Similarly, though it is not a new concept, the unreliable or ‘corrupt’ narrator in literature is an agent of miscommunication, the success of which relies on the reader expecting a story to be told in a certain way – the expectation narrative is glitched. Amongst these artists, and as with most avant-garde movements, the genre has been commercialized and popularized and therefore we can see the influences in popular music. However, Russolos theory has transcended the industrial age just as noise landscape has. If the theory, then, resolved to mimic the sounds experienced in the era, then Glitch is representative of the digital age and further, goes beyond to mock or imitate the failings of this, this is why it can be considered post-digital.
shock to the system: FUTURE & present
We can consider Glitch as a phenomenon that was somewhat born out what Alan Toffler called Future Shock. Toffler described Future Shock as being a psychologically and physically debilitating response to technological change when occurs in short a period of time. In the decades since his book was published, technology has advanced with rapid emergence and thus, in 2004, (and at a peak in digital development), media theorist Douglas Rushkoff published his response to Toffler in Present Shock. [Insert Book Cover] In the preface to his text, Rushkoff posits that "Prophecy no longer feels like a description of the future, but, rather, a guide to the present." (p. 8). Though both approaching the same topic, the explicit difference in the men’s work is that Toffler warns of the future and Rushkoff tells us it is already here and we are too far in to having any perception of the future. The glitch artist exists in, in presentism. Rather than pursuing the next aesthetic of the future, (and according to Rushkoff, this is inaccessible anyway) the Glitch artist (whatever the medium) is happy to use what is here now yet modify and distort it to change the narrative. The disconnect associated with a mechanism for coping shock (future or present) is explicit in Glitch art – the artist will, most likely, never touch a physical manifestation of his work on a canvas, a vinyl record or a page. The commodity that exists in the digital realm is easily ripe for being modified and distorted by others.
authenticity? or, nah?
Whilst an aesthetic movement in itself, Glitch Art is not inaccessible, or particularly avant-garde, and forms of purposeful glitching or ‘glitch – alike’ art form part of our everyday digital culture. Instagram uses filters to reduce high-definition digitized photographs to the blurred, off-color or overexposed pictures synonymous with analogue photography – a purposeful, machine-made glitch is made. Popular apps such as Instagram or Snapseed capitalize on the fetishistic aesthetic of old-technology through digital skeuomorphism, something that Philip Rosen calls ‘digital mimicry’ (2001, p. 304). This performative irony is not limited to photo filters but permeates throughout what is referred to as ‘hipster culture’, there seems to be a fetish for cultural artifacts that are, or were, faulty or, more specifically glitches in our immediate past revived to be a plaything of the hipster. Conversely, the glitch, or reference to the imperfect format, makes flesh what is authentic about digital technology – it is not yet without fault. If we assume that, as Rushkoff proposes, we are suffering from Present Shock, then artistic forms of glitch can offer some comfort – the faults in the system can be mapped, confronted and challenged and that the commodity is not invalidated by its faults.
As society continues to uphold and develop its obsessions with increasingly fragmented accumulation of data, its visceral effect permeates every aspect of society from news reporting to education. This, our digital era, does not appear as a linear narrative but as a splintered assemblage of contrasting yet simultaneous moments that are too vast and detached to plot and move forward. We have, largely, moved past the age in which glitches were an unfortunate but unavoidable part of our computerized evolution and, not only are we able to avoid such anomalies, we can pinpoint the origins and recreate them at our will.
references
Moradi, I and Ant S, et al. (2009). Glitch: Designing Imperfection. New York: Mark Batty Publisher.
Rosen, P. (2001). Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rushkoff, D. (2013). Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. London: Penguin.
Russolo, L. (1986). The Art of Noises. New York: Pendragon Press. Available online at: http://www.ubu.com/papers/russolo.html [accessed 12th May 2017).
Toffler, A. (1970). Future Shock. New York: Random House.
Rosen, P. (2001). Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Rushkoff, D. (2013). Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. London: Penguin.
Russolo, L. (1986). The Art of Noises. New York: Pendragon Press. Available online at: http://www.ubu.com/papers/russolo.html [accessed 12th May 2017).
Toffler, A. (1970). Future Shock. New York: Random House.