The following is an adaption of the “theory” section of my university honors thesis to this platform.
For years I have been captivated by the broken. As a teenager I discovered Glitch art and was immediately taken. It was unlike any other form of art that I had previously tried to learn. Why is it so captivating? What is so different about it from more traditional forms of art? How do the unique visual forms of Glitch inform our fascination? I believe that it comes from the very foundations of how we understand imagery. Glitch art runs counter to the ideal expressed in visual technology, that of a perfect artifice. In the breaking of this artifice, the constructed nature of digital media is exposed, changing our internalized interpretation of the imagery.
Breakages or ‘Glitches’ in digital images expose the underlying identity of a digital medium. Malfunction in digital imagery can result through a variety of means, either intentionally or unintentionally.
“Perspectives on damage to human artifacts have typically fallen into two categories: that of the ideal pristine artifact, in which damage is problematic and to be avoided or repaired; and that of the entropic artifact, in which damage acknowledges mortality, temporality, and serendipity” (Kilker,52).
Kilker denotes these distinctions in relation to analog photography, though this framework can also be applied to digital imagery. Typically the goal of digital imagery is to create an artifice of reality, where any element that acknowledges a digital foundation is undesirable. Counter to this ideal, elements that expose this foundation can provide a similar authenticity to that of a physical entropic artifact. Our understanding of a digital image as an artifact is informed by the cues provided by its structure.
In his work Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes introduces and defines the concepts of Studium and Punctum. Studium is the fundamental human understanding of an image, whereas Punctum is defined as a superseding element that captures an individual’s attention (Barthes). Studium is involved with identity, in that our understanding of identity informs our fundamental understanding. I posit that there are two different identities that exist in Studium: the visual and the formal.
Visual identity exists as the subject of the image, the depiction that it presents. It is the level of understanding where we view an image as its subject, not as a separate artifact. Formal identity exists as our understanding of an image as a separate artifact from its subject. It is the recognition of the medium. These identities are intrinsically tied, as our understanding of an image is dependent on our conception of the interplay between subject and medium.
The relationships we view between an image’s subject and its medium play a heavy role in our experience. Tangibility presents a huge impact on Studium, as physicality or the impression of physicality informs a certain authenticity inherent to a physical artifact. Leafing through old photo albums has a different feeling than going through a hard drive of old photos. You can still reminisce, but the presence of a physical artifact, beholden to environmental factors, lends it a more personal touch.
In my first year of college, I was introduced to Impressionism through an art history course. I fell in love with not only the artworks, but the ideas behind them. The intention and understanding of light that informed the works of Cezanne, Monet, and Manet were of great interest to me. The images presented in my professors lectures and in textbooks were a good visual sample, however nothing compared to viewing actual works. The Portland Art Museum was close to campus, and I made frequent trips during that time. Seeing the gloss of the oil paint, the century old strokes, and the sheer scale of these works made it much more meaningful. The medium came alive before my very eyes through the tangibility of these artifacts. Tangibility informs the Formal identity of a work, in the sense that it impacts our understanding of it as an artifact, not as an image.
The Village of L’Estaque Seen from the Sea, Paul Cezanne, 1876.
Barnes Collection
For me the Punctum of a physical artifact is much different than a digital one. The tangibility of a physical artifact lends to it a culpability, as they are beholden to the effects of their environment. Everything fades, even the most pristine artifact will eventually change with time, just like us. Digital imagery, however, is not beholden to the rules of the physical world. Decay does not present in the same way. When something digital breaks, it does so in a much more bizarre and spectacular way. In this breakage, we get a glimpse into the Formal identity of the image, the structures used to construct an image in a digital space. Our understanding changes, from a Visual focus to a Formal one.
As the technology of our displays, cameras, and hardware improve, so does the imagery they can produce. The elements of their Formal identity are quietly moving further away, as we become more immersed in the Visual. In movements / aesthetics such as Glitch or Lo-Fi, the focus is on creating or emulating an entropic artifact. These are artifacts that have been altered through entropic processes (Kilker, 52). In physical media, the type of wear is that of age: physical damage / deformations, dirt, fading, etc (Kilker, 53). In digital media entropic artifacts commonly result from some form of corruption, which can come from sources such as: compression, damage to code, damage to hardware, intentional manipulation, and emulation of said sources through software.
The appeal I find in Glitch as an aesthetic is its inherent acknowledgement of its construction, as its defining visual characteristics come from the breaking of the systems that compose it. It relies on our understanding that it exists counter to the designed intention, intrinsically aberrative in nature. It exists in a similar way within a social context, as it is intrinsically viewed as aberrative in the popular canon. Though, as time has worn on, it has proliferated into more spaces, seeing use in much less noble ways.
“A glitch or technical error can be used to pose questions and open up critical spaces in new and unforeseen ways. Herein lies the appeal of glitch to numerous artists past and present … glitches have also been quickly appropriated back into dominant fashions and styles, moving from political or social critique to commodity, glitch aesthetics bear a fundamentally antagonistic relation even to themselves” (Kane,1).
An example that Kane points to is Kanye West’s video for “Welcome to Heartbreak,” which appropriated compression aesthetics from Paul B. Davis’ work, while eschewing the social context and DIY nature of the original (Kane, 2).
The Commodification that Kane speaks of has only grown in the 8 years it’s been since their article was published. The proliferation of Kim Asendorf’s Pixel Sorting Algorithm is a great example of this. Originally published to GitHub in 2010, Asendorf’s algorithm organizes pixels within an image by column and row according to the specific mode set by the user. The result is an image that bleeds into itself according to the rules by which it is digitally interpreted. Much like something like datamoshing or audio-based manipulation, it is the structure in the forms of the breakage that creates visual interest.
An Image Run Through Asendorfs Original Algorithm
When I happened upon it as a teen I was enamored, just like pretty much everyone else who found it. A simple search through Behance or Pinterest will return hundreds of results of this technique applied in very similar ways. A Google search will return a multitude of tools meant to facilitate the creation of this imagery. I would be lying if I said I haven’t tried to recreate it in my own way. Its proliferation has hollowed the effect that Pixel Sorting provides. It has become so oversaturated, that any potential deeper meaning that it can provide has been stripped away like the faces of dozens of marble busts run through this algorithm.
In the end, I find the value of glitched imagery to be in its abject authenticity. It is honest in its own way, because we see a digital image for what it really is, a simulacrum. In the fracturing of the artifice we can peer into the structures that compose it. The Formal identity of the image becomes apparent, our understanding changes from subject to artifact. In purely entropic imagery there is no intention, it exists as its own truth. Intentionally glitched imagery is contentious to me, as hollow intentions can strip the imagery of greater meaning. The application of Glitch aesthetics has grown a lot over the last decade, and as technology improves it will improve with it. As new structures are created they will subsequently be torn apart and explored by those seeking the truth of the simulacra.
Works Cited:
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, 1988.
Kane, Carolyn L. “Photo Noise.” History of Photography, Vol 40, Issue 2, 2016, 129–145.
Kane, Carolyn L. “Compression Aesthetics: Glitch from the Avante-Garde to Kanye West”
InVisible Culture. Issue 21, 2014.
Kilker, Julian. “Digital Dirt and the Entropic Artifact: Exploring Damage in Visual Media.”
Visual Communication Quarterly, Vol 16, №1, 2009, 50–63.
Special Thanks to Stephen Lee, Advisor on my Original Thesis
Thanks to Anne Ettel for proofreading this edit.
