{"id":6800,"date":"2013-04-19T07:55:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T07:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/?p=6800"},"modified":"2013-04-23T15:27:46","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T15:27:46","slug":"creation-by-destruction-the-rise-of-glitch-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/?p=6800","title":{"rendered":"Creation by destruction: the rise of glitch art"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Clint Enns pulled apart the wires inside his Atari computer, the world of the racing videogame onscreen began violently to collapse. Dozens of lines and chunks suddenly emerged from images of the sky and ground.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>Glitch, please. Digital artist Carrie Gates says glitch will gain more respect once critics understand the artists\u2019 methods.<\/p>\n

Flashes of blue, yellow and purple static swallowed the car and roadway whole. Even stranger was the fate of the \u201cstart\u201d sign hanging over the pavement. \u201cEvery time I\u2019d hit a few wires together,\u201d the Toronto filmmaker recalls, \u201cthe \u2018st\u2019 would go away and it became \u2018art.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The chaotic footage, shown at Gallery 1C03 in Winnipeg,\u00a0 is just one example of glitch art \u2014 a growing movement of artists manipulating technology to produce colourful and often abstract images. The genre has become not only the latest look in art, entertainment and fashion worldwide, but also a reflection of concerns about our technology-driven culture.<\/p>\n

At its core, glitch art is created by running visuals through programs and devices they weren’t meant to be shown in. This is known as \u201cdatabending\u201d for images and \u201cdatamoshing\u201d for videos. The method lets artists toy with a visual file\u2019s code, the digital skeleton that shapes the overall image. Removing one \u201cbone\u201d in one spot might create a series of lines on the surface; adding a bone to another spot may change how part of the image is coloured. One popular method is \u201canalog glitching,\u201d the use of broken laptops, cameras and other devices to alter this file code.<\/p>\n

Not only is it the latest look in entertainment and fashion, but it also reflects concerns about our technology-driven culture.<\/p>\n

Because glitch artists can\u2019t exactly control how their images will turn out, many are drawn to the genre by the element of surprise. \u201cErrors are unexpected and exciting,\u201d says Enns. \u201cYou can look at the canvas and say, \u2018I made that? Wow that\u2019s cool. I’ve never seen anything like that before.\u2019\u201d Designer and glitch artist Rob Sheridan, creative director of music acts Nine Inch Nails and How to Destroy Angels, considers the touch-and-go method to be more like cooking than painting. \u201cThe process injects new ideas, and you can react to how they feel and follow certain paths. It\u2019s sometimes a much more inspiring way to work than staring at a blank document and relying entirely on your own brain to fill in every pixel.\u201d<\/p>\n

A dash of chaos
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

Glitching also creates vibrant and visually pleasing rays of colour, is do-it-yourself-friendly and is still very much uncharted territory. Given these features and the supportive online glitch art community, it\u2019s not hard to see why the genre has moved steadily mainstream in the last ten years. Following the 2005 creation of the \u201cGlitch Art\u201d Flickr group,\u00a0 more and more artists \u00a0have connected via wikis, blogs and forums to share their art, learn new glitching techniques, and support each other\u2019s work. For example, South Korea\u2013based artist Mathieu St-Pierre saw his \u201cGlitch Artists Collective\u201d Facebook group grow to 135 people after only one month. \u201cWith sites like Facebook, you can get genuine feedback on what you\u2019re doing,\u201d he says, adding that the glitch community has given him more confidence in his work. \u201cIt pushes you to not to make the same thing and try to be original.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How to Destroy Angels is one of several music acts with glitched promo material. Clockwise, left to right: <\/em>Mariqueen Maandig, Trent Reznor, Rob Sheridan, Atticus Ross.<\/p>\n

Today, the glitch look has become part of our culture. After discovering the genre, Sheridan used Photoshop to glitch the album artwork for Nine Inch Nails\u2019 With Teeth<\/em> (2005) and Year Zero<\/em> (2007) to reflect the industrial rock group\u2019s chaotic sound. In 2009, Kanye West\u2019s music video for \u201cWelcome to Heartbreak\u201d was glitched with datamoshing. In 2010, Colorado artist Kristopher Collins launched the glitching app Decim8 that lets users databend their photos with the touch of a button. In 2012, fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and electronic musicians Skrillex and Diplo began using glitch in their ads, promotional images or videos. Glitch artwork and video have been exhibited in places worldwide including the Share art festival in Italy, Oslo Art Academy in Norway and the Vancouver New Music Festival. An annual glitch art conference, appropriately titled GLI.TC\/H, began in Chicago in 2010 and has since travelled to the Netherlands and United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Sheridan glitched the 2010 artwork for The Social Network<\/em> soundtrack album (through databending) and for his own group How to Destroy Angels\u2019 2012 \u201cAn Omen EP\u201d (through analog glitching). Sheridan says he chose glitch art to reflect the theme of information overload present on both albums. \u201cIt\u2019s an inevitable reaction to the world becoming more digital. There\u2019s just something cathartic about unleashing errors and chaos into ordered systems. It\u2019s like bringing some humanity into the machine \u2014 imperfection being, really, the essence of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The medium is the message<\/p>\n

The unease with our culture of perpetual upgrading is carried by fellow glitch artists including Carrie Gates, a digital media designer from Saskatoon. \u201cI’m really frustrated with the hyper-clean vision commercial technology is pushing forward,\u201d she says. \u201cI don’t like the idea that everything is so controlled and idealized. There\u2019s so much more complexity to life that glitch art enforces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, as filmmaker Enns explains, it comments on our fixation with upgrading and obsolescence. \u201cAs an artist, it\u2019s great: I have access to cheap cameras within months of them coming out. As someone living on this planet that\u2019s slowly being destroyed due to overconsumption, it\u2019s not so great. It\u2019s one of the political aspects of glitch art, revealing that newer isn\u2019t better.\u201d Other artists, Sheridan notes, are driven by a curiosity or plain subversive urge. \u201cGlitch draws in the type of people who get a new tool or a new device or new software, and think, \u2018How can I use this in a way that wasn’t intended, and get interesting results?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Accidental \u201cArt.” Clint Enns made the glitch video prepare to qualify<\/em> on an Atari running the 1982 racing game Pole Position<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some critics dismiss glitch as a mere button-pressing exercise that only produces jarring images. In their essay \u201cNotes on Glitch,\u201d glitch theorists Hugh S. Manon and Daniel Temkin note that GlitchBot, an automated Flickr account, parodies how repetitive the genre can be by randomly glitching and uploading images to Flickr\u2019s \u201cGlitch Art\u201d group. Many appear as similar blocks of static. Artist Gates counters: \u201cIt actually takes a long time and a lot of practice to hone your craft. It just looks easier to them because it\u2019s digital. Eventually, with a greater understanding of how and why these pieces are produced, the respect will come.\u201d<\/p>\n

But will glitch become a victim of its own success? As the look gets co-opted into big-money advertising and promotion, will it lose that very subversive bite that has made it worthy? \u201cI don’t think so. It proves that glitch art can sooner or later stand as an art movement,\u201d St-Pierre says. \u201cCommercial media will get saturated with certain glitch effects, but it pressures artists to come up with new glitches and visuals to keep the movement alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

What’s certain that you\u2019ll be seeing more glitch art in years to come, as new technologies continue to provide platforms \u2014 and issues \u2014 to connect artists and audiences. \u201cGlitch art is about trying to figure out, experiment with, and demystify the technology that we\u2019re using,\u201d Enns says. \u201cThat impulse will keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a subversive digital-art movement has become the latest look in art and advertising, by mocking our drive for technological perfection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[174,175,170,171,169,172,176,173],"class_list":["post-6800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","tag-carrie-gates","tag-clint-enns","tag-databending","tag-datamoshing","tag-glitch-art","tag-how-to-destroy-angels","tag-mathieu-st-pierre","tag-rob-sheridan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6800"}],"version-history":[{"count":93,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7470,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6800\/revisions\/7470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/capitalarts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}