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In fear of codifying something that I feel is still very much in development and realizing itself I hesitantly use the label glitch art. Glitch art does have an identity. It is specific, however, glitch art is not complete. It remains open-ended and denies codification in its form.
Glitch art is often aestheticized and fetishized technological [human] errors or anticipated accidents that can produce unintended [desired] results.
Glitch art can function as a microcosm for new media art, exemplifying all of its potential in foregrounding critical relationships to digital culture and/or culture in general.
Glitch art opens up a new, potentially democratic, space for aesthetic and conceptual dialogue with respect to our amorphous identities in our new digital ecology. This space can allow us to critically address our relationship to technology, the role it plays in our society and the effect it has on communication, the aggregation and decimation of information. Glitch art attacks the technological conventions that have been assumed, and the media systems that have been assimilated, by popular culture and subvert the slick, sterile, and seemingly perfect surface of technologies propagated by special interests. Consequently a mutual threat is posed between these new technologies/upgrades which seek to nullify glitches and the glitches which attempt to expose these technologies/imposed systems.
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From a media history standpoint it is also interesting to anthologize aspects of media, such as glitches, for they may be forgotten when our signals become more perfect and our glitches less visual
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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The genre [of glitch] has no recognizable center. No handle. It keeps moving, shape shifting. It blurs when its recognized and then only sharpens for brief periods. It is not a genre so much as a tactic for subversion that has become a fashion statement.
-Kim Cascone
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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Arent mistakes always more challenging, more interesting, more touching than sickening success stories? Just look at the American avant-guarde film movement from the 1950s and 1960s; one name that stands out is Stan Brakhage, the hardcore eccentric filmmaker who always destroyed his shots in the developing process by adding mysterious chemicals, food insect legs or whatever. His mistakes became an art form influencing what today is seen as mainstream visual old-skool glitch aesthetics used in everyday jingles for MTV and ads for Jaguar cars.
-Per Platou
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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It is impossible to deliberately make a mistake.
-Per Platou
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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The visual glitch is an artifact resulting from an error. It is neither the cause, nor the error itself, it is simply the product of an error and more specifically its visual manifestation. It is a significant slip that marks a departure from our expected result.
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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Visual glitches are rare in standard occurrence and yet paradoxically, they are quite easy to provoke, which makes them ideal for being appropriate, used as a medium for artwork or even elevated to the status of a genre. Imperfections in diamonds are affectionately called inclusions. Outside of art and design, however, glitches dont get off the hook so easily they are branded as bad reception, undesirable fuzz, static or interference.
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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The appreciation of the glitch can also be perceived as an attempt to explore or facilitate the fetishization of technology itself.
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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For the glitch artist, the process of creating visuals is an involved process, which stems from an understanding of their tools: computer hardware (storage media, memory and display technology) and software (operating systems, image processing libraries, file storage and data transmission protocols). () Aesthetic considerations therefore govern the way glitch artists crop, compose and even provoke the generation of these images.
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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Does the glitch serve as a constant reminder for the human capacity to err? Does it comfort us by humanizing the machine?
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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Some attempts have been made to categorize the aesthetic qualities of glitches and understand where they sit, or even ask the question whether glitches are a genre, medium or sub-medium in the pantheon of art forms. On the whole, though, it is my belief that the glitch should remain largely uncategorizable and orphaned in the face of changing technology. Its lack of function, or unwanted function, sits well within the realm of glitch art and design already, where it is used as a medium that adequately conveys persuasion and subversion in the same visual frame.
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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For me its not so much the glitch aspect thats interesting but the generative aspect letting the unexpected happen and using it. Thats what computers are for, in my eyes, and thats why I find that approach important: our own imagination is very limited, and our aesthetic standards are skewed, so human-generated design is often very predictable. We copy. We stick to what we consider the right way. We do it like weve done it before. Computers obviously have no idea or opinion about aesthetics, let alone beauty. Theyre unbiased. A machine will relentlessly output every option including what we call glitch if youve set it up that way (sometimes it helps to be a bad programmer!) and you get to see things youd never have considered yourself. This is like spontaneous mutation with regard to evolution, I think. Humans would not exist without it.
-Angela Lorenz
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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In my eyes there is no such thing as an error from the point of view of the machine: it runs or it crashes, and giving an error message is just part of the process.
-Angela Lorenz
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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Political activists (the ones that I know, at least) tend to be very conservative when it comes to aesthetics, and for a reason they want to address the broad public with their issue, not some kind of small avant-garde circle that might be attracted by innovative design experiments. () I dont believe in subversion in the art world its too often just a feeble excuse for not even trying. () Why should glitch be subversive? I mean, is there an evil oppressive art police that says errors are verboten? I find errors often interesting, not because theyre errors but because they generate results I myself wouldnt have come up with.
-Angela Lorenz
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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What is the difference (to the viewer or listener) if I create an image that resembles a glitch versus capturing an actual glitch and using it in a piece? () While some artists start with actual software garbage or glitches others merely replicate the effect of a glitched file using plug-ins and patches. To the viewer or listener there is no difference since they are unaware of the history/origin of the artifact. This becomes a problem on the axis of mannerism versus accident or reproduction versus original. But in the world of pop spectacle producers rely on the illusion of content via mannerism. () So we consume idealized artifacts that rely on a crafting of effect: a simulacra of content conjured through style. The effect of a glitch is to subvert the listeners expectations. A glitch is cognitively reacted to as a ruptu re in the continuum of an idealized artifact and originated as a subversion of the smooth and technically perfect surface of digital audio. Glitch is a critique on what audio purists thought of as a benchmark of pristine audio; a quality that only those with expensive gear could afford to enjoy.
-Kim Cascone
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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A glitch is an accident, a malfunction, and most accidents are not deterministic since they are unexpected. While failure can be deterministic, accidents are not. Determinism implies intent. Accidents imply randomness. However, I dont think there is a distinction between randomness and glitchiness.
-Kim Cascone
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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if the software doesnt do what you expect it to, that represents a glitch because its a deviation from what the programmer wanted. Of course, its the programmers fault, but we prefer to blame the machine and say it glitched. So, I think glitch as being the outcome of some mechanistic process, and if you restart the machine in exactly the same way, youll get the same glitch.
-Tony (Ant) Scott
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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The glitch aesthetic is very much allied with a particular era of technology, and looks the way it does because of the way current processors are engineered, how data is organized to be processed efficiently and because visual output devices are mostly raster-line based. I think its only when one or more or these aspects changes radically that digital trash will take on a markedly different visual character.
-Tony (Ant) Scott
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Moradi, Iman, et al. "Glitch: Designing Imperfection." New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009
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glitches are mostly a result of miscommunication or mistranslation when transferring data from one environment to another.
-Iman Moradi
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Moradi, Iman. "GTLCH AESTHETICS." Diss. U of Huddersfield, 2004. pdf.
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failure has become a prominent aesthetic in many of the arts in the late 20th century.
-Kim Cascone
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Moradi, Iman. "GTLCH AESTHETICS." Diss. U of Huddersfield, 2004. pdf.
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