BEHOLD, glitch art. You’ve seen it, you’ve heard about it, but once you’ve made examples of it, you’ll never be the same again. What is glitch? In its truest sense, glitch art is the depiction of “beautiful” errors whether digital or analog, such as found in data artifacts and other “bugs,” by either corrupting digital code or by physically manipulating electronic devices, for example by pressing all the keys of a computer at once. You try your best to arrive at a technological error. You document it by saving the artifact as a file. Then you call it art.
Want to produce your own glitch art? Don’t worry if it sounds obscure. The following passages aren’t technical at all. So let’s produce glitch art. You can do this with the simplest and most available picture files. Simply search for an image file of your liking in a .jpeg, then let’s play with it. Or for the sake of novelty, let’s download a .jpeg file and see what we can do with it. Point your Web browser to https://bit.ly/1KUXdA3 and save the image on your computer.
Normally one opens an image file by clicking or double clicking it. Depending on how your computer is configured, this automatically opens the file in a program, most likely a photo viewer or photo-editor program. But for this art lesson, let’s load the downloaded file in an online glitch generator, found at https://bit.ly/1e3V7ei. Don’t worry, the resource is completely free and open source, brought to you by Soulwire.co.uk.
Once loaded in the glitch generator called Glitchmap, the .jpeg file can be manipulated to depict glitches. To create a glitch, simply play with the variable sliders on the Web page, and save your artworks by taking screen shots of each glitched image that you want to proclaim as art. Then—voila!—you’ve produced at least one glitched representation of the Mona Lisa, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece which you had earlier downloaded. Congratulations, you are now an official glitch artist.
A WORLD FULL OF ERRORS
SEEN from the above exercise, a glitch is what we may call the unexpected result of a technological malfunction. In recent history, the word “glitch” was first recorded in English in 1962 during an American flight to outer space. When describing problems with allocating much-needed electrical resources, astronaut John Glenn remarked, “A glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electric current.”
These changes have taken many forms. An early example of glitches used in media art include manipulating hardware to produce spectral video effects which were recorded on videotape, such as those zany psychedelic image “riffs” found in rock music videos from the 1970s. From a distinct point of view, glitch may be construed as video, audio or digital noise which are incorporated into the artwork.
Though seemingly random in its generation, a glitch is strictly defined as a technological phenomenon, requiring tools and equipment beyond the traditional toolboxes of the fine artist. With this definition, it is safe to say that the random paint drippings of Jackson Pollock in his series of abstract expressionist works is not glitch art per se, for they were produced with traditional art tools, namely the paintbrush and the flick of the artistic wrist—no matter how “glitchy” they look.
AN ART OPENING
A RECENT art opening in Makati City, the financial district of Manila, led me to reevaluate just to what extent glitch art may include in its data set.
The exhibit was titled What Could Go Glitch Will Go Glitch, the second solo show of multidisciplinary artist Gerecho Iniel Cruz at the Altromondo Gallery on the third level of The Picasso Boutique Serviced Residences. According to the show’s preface, Cruz “utilizes today’s digital advances and their failures as both tool and key features in his art. He believes that the perfections of computer software and their ability to edit out glitches only result in art that is synthetic and clinical. For this exhibition, Gerecho presents tromp l’oeil paintings on wood and paper, as well as sculptures of different mediums. The entire exhibition space will be transformed into an optical illusion.”
Now this can be somewhat alarming. What happens if artists begin to use descriptions or words beyond the scope of accepted global use? In this case, Cruz is spared for he neither proclaims himself as a glitch artist nor does he allude to his work as glitch art. But once he says that his work produced via a traditional toolbox is glitch art, then he crosses into unstill waters.
Let’s dive into the matter. When Cruz produces paintings and sculptures that incorporate representations of technological glitches, he is not producing glitch art per se, for he uses the traditional toolboxes of the fine artist. He is a painter and sculptor who represents in his work what are viewed by him as technological glitches. He is not a glitch artist.
But for Cruz to appropriate the loaded term “glitch,” while not utilizing its toolboxes, can be a bit troublesome. It’s like a situation where an artist expounds on the digital avant garde without showing that he uses the tools of the digital avant garde. Granted that the artworks of Cruz on display were not examples of glitch art, they may still move the viewer if the beholder is into depictions of the cosmos rendered into grid-like canvas units or as white dots on a black canvas surface.
There are fine points and there even finer points to discuss, but every art critic and every critical fine artist has to be careful about proper nomenclature. n