Glitch refers to an electronic feedback, sonic or visual, created when a reciever misinterprets a signal. This can happen at three stages – compression of data into message, the reading of data, or a fault in the equipment receiving the data.
A glitch is more than an unwanted digital transmission, it’s a physical artifact of a less-than-perfect system of electronic communication, reminding us that our hardware and software architectures have not transcended the scope of error. Although glitches are generally unwanted or unplanned and therefore precipitous of negativity, movements within contemporary media practices have rallied around the aesthetic of the electronic accidental. What is so compelling about the glitch?
Electronic feedback is a rude awakening for an otherwise hypnotically smooth functioning system of information. Moreover, glitches expose how the machinery we take for granted thinks, and even more interestingly, by defying our expectations, force us to encounter the implicit paradigm of representation we impose upon technological artifice.
This might be considered an artistic impulse with traces of a modernist sensibility, questioning and problematizing the very medium upon which the artist practices. Furthermore, glitch artists question the model of transmitter, message, and receiver by rupturing the flow of communication with ambivalence.
Although seemingly unproductive, this rupture of information can be enlightening. What we consider a productive flow of information is a fetter on our imagination and conception of socioeconomic relationships. Reducing the possibility of electronic communication to a syntactic exchange of orderly commands not only limits the possible implementations of technology, but also possibilities for how humans can interact with each other and think about society.
The glitch smashes the code in order to blaze a trail for something new – meaning, symbolic, and otherwise.
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!