The glitch aesthetic

mother and daughter from lemonsalt's photo stream

Machines are built to run perfectly. To get the job done. To make sure things go off without a hitch... or should I say glitch. Modern technology isn’t without flaws though. Computers are notorious offenders of glitching out because of coding errors or hardware malfunctions.. There is nothing more irritating than having a video game, video file, or music file suddenly glitch and become distorted for some reason. Or worse yet to get the blue screen of death on your computer when it crashes. To most of us these glitches are a general annoyance, but there is flourishing underground scene that thrives off the glitch aesthetic. From glitch music, to datamoshing and other types of glitch art.

sprouting viscera from andrew benson on Vimeo.

I wanted to tap into this with my dance. To have a glitching aspect to what I do. In a way it fits in with my idea of transhumanism. Nanotechnolgy glitching within a cyborg. Psychopharmaceuticals and performance enhancing pharmaceuticals having unattended consequences. Errors that would cause a transhuman to have strange ticks. Also glitching serves as a gateway to exploring alternate dimensions of reality. Like a glitch within the matrix of space time. Extreme speeds of slow and fast such as warping through space or rewinding action and repeating it.




In popping a similar idea was explored in the 80's with a style known as animation. The practitioner would imitate stop motion claymation characters from movies. And there was the concept of strobing where a practitioner would imitate being under a strobe light. So the idea isn’t necessarily completely new. Every new idea comes from older ideas. But ideas are reinvented according to place, time period, and setting. The technology has changed. Datamoshing is an example of editors using glitches artistically in a new movie medium. The abundance of CGI in films is another place to draw inspiration. Movies like The Matrix philosophically contemplate reality while at the same time use video editing techniques and CGI to create a false reality to tell the story through film. And even newer films such as Avatar change the viewing experience with new technologies and the use of 3-D.

So as technology progresses and there will be new and exciting glitches to physically explore. But I feel the main philosophical component will remain the same. What is our true reality? Why are we here? Where are we going? And what is the truth between reality and illusion in the physical world.

If you want to view more glitch art online visit Flikr's glitch art pool.