dessalles

[Image: still from Brent Gustafson's R.I.G.]

Tuesday’s printer freakout got me thinking: Whatever happened to Glitch?

Maybe I’ve fallen off the beat but I’m pretty sure what was once, you know, a thing is no longer a thing. [quick aside: one of my favorite definitions is Krome Barratt's definition for "thing" - something to the effect of "a thing is something which desires a name"] As far as current cultural/artistic movements go, I think Glitch is conceptually ten years too early. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Glitch appeared first as a sub-genre of electronic music about 10 years ago. It employed the noises, clicks, “glicthes” and other incidental artifacts of errant digital audio as its basic building blocks. The concept was simple: use technology to make something beautiful out of technology’s waste.

[untitled by Oval from Ovalcommers, 2001]

It was quickly extended to the visual arts.

[Image: vertscape3-double7 by stallio]

I imagine it emerged as a reaction to the visible seams and audible failures of early-90s technology. And while its source material - scratched CDs, dusty 8-bit game cartridges, screaming modems, corrupt binaries and faulty memory - were uniquely of the era, Glitch will probably find more cultural relevance after the supposed dawn of ubiquitous computing.

As our mastery over 1s and 0s grows, we’re getting better and better at replacing those spectacular failures with restrained interface. Increasingly, when systems malfunction we’re presented with polite messaging or nothing at all. The horror elicited by the Blue Screen of Death has been replaced by complacency and insecure confusion. I suspect when even the most mundane activities become digitally mediated, failure will be denied the ugly face it deserves. It’s at that point I suppose Glitch will receive its due revival - violent artistic psychotherapy as an outlet for repressed technological frustration.

related: The Aesthetics of Failure by Kim Cascone