Glitch Art in Post-Modern Perspective, Part1-Linda Chang

The glitch represents an idea or a perspective on the technology and the digital age. Glitch art is the result of an error that symbolizes the event with the unintended visuals. The validity of glitch art is sometime challenged by its quality and medium, but when comparing the concept and process behind the glitch art to post-modern practice and experiment in medium (especially video art), one can see the significant connection between the two genres of art.

From televisions to smart phones, the modern society heavily relies on electronic devices to receive information as technology gradually taking over life experience. With better-designed products and well-integrated user interface, most of the people do not think of the science and technology behind the pixels they see on the screen. With the assistance of technology, it is easier for the artist to aim perfection in their work with greater efficiency. The computer has changed the ways and method artists approach their work such as digital painting, photo manipulation, and film editing. With the assistance of software such as Photoshop, artists strive for greater quality and more precision in their work. Most of the time, artifacts are the undesirable result from the error, and artists usually try to eliminate artifacts to achieve perfection in their work.

Glitch art, on the other hand, emphasizes on a drastically different aspect on technology. The idea of glitch art is to break the routine appears on the monitor and use the imperfection to reveal the errors that occur in all technology. Some may doubt the validity of viewing error itself as a form of art, but one should understand the glitch is the visual representation of the concept and process of the error. Similar ideas has been experimented by many post-modern artists. Video artist Nam June Paik is known for exploration of new medium and its information structures. Paik explored the perception on television in the sixties and pioneered in “moving tv away from high-fidelity pictures to low-fidelity.”[1] In Paik’s Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., the mass amount of television machines and the neon lights shaping the America reveals contemporary society’s reliance on media. [2] Paik also modified the televisions to have random appearance and colors on the screen, which provided more humanity in the mechanical objects. [3] [4]

Derived from the root of video art, glitch art adventured into a new dimension in the digital art with the metaphor in its flaw. William van Giessen and Josst van der Steen, designers at O.K. Parking studio, reserved all visual information from errors in the technical device to present the “fingerprint” of the software or hardware. [5] By presenting the accidental images from their process, Giessen and Steen attempt to show the idea of concept of glitch to their audience who are unfamiliar with it. The disjointed visual language in glitch art challenges perfection that the audiences are used to by pointing out the fragility of the technology. Both video art and glitch art transform formal configuration into a new visual expression by using technology to demonstrate the concept behind these experiments.

Since technology has been designed and improved to achieve the exact result every time, the contemporary artists often create, rather than accidentally discover, glitch art by data conversion or intentional manipulation of the sources. The idea of using digital glitch as an art had also expanded from television monitors to almost every electronic device. Despite the different process to create glitches, the value in glitch art comes from the rare failures in mechanical process and its unpredictable results. It is the failure in the process that makes it a successful piece of art.

Nam June Paik

Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S.

O.K Parking
Webcam, Webcam Stills

O.K Parking

Glitch Canvas

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     1. Jonathan David Finberg, Art since 1940: Strategies of Being (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2000), 352.

     2. Penelope J.E. Davies et al., Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition (Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall, 2011), 1065.

     3. Sam Hunter et al., Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecutre, Photography (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2004), 367.

     4. John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik (New York : Guggenheim Museum, 2000), 214-230.

     5. Iman Moradi, ed., Glitch: Designing Imperfection (New York : Mark Batty Publisher, 2009), 22.