In the Iliad, there is no natural death —
everything comes about by intent
… All that violence
out of somebody’s error.
—Susan Stewart, “In the Western World,” in Red Rover (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 79.
Tag: error
Notes on Glitch
29. Glitch art does not “dirty up” a text, but instead undermines its basic structure. Glitch damage is integral, even when its effects manifest at the surface.
30. Code is built in layers, each with a metaphor constructed by the programmers building it, to enact and describe its behavior. The tech blogger Joel Spolsky has described these abstractions as “leaky.”10 They are perched on hidden metaphors beneath—those used by the programmers who created the libraries, other software components, the operating system, etc. Each metaphor tries to be completely descriptive of the code’s behavior but the lower levels, with their foreign and seemingly primitive logic, cannot be contained—they leak. The details that are obscured at the lower levels—such as using a two-digit number to store a year which is displayed in four digits—can potentially play havoc with higher level systems, as many feared would happen with the so-called Y2K bug. These hidden layers spill logic upward, sometimes slowly, but often in sudden bursts: a glitch.
Notes on Glitch
17. At some point along the path of actions that culminates in a work of glitch art, it is inevitable that the artist will contemplate whether their work is succeeding at failing, or failing at failing. For some artists, there is a tendency to post online a Warhol-like series of glitches all based on the same image. This embrace of seriality represents an unconscious striving for what glitch practitioners know full well to be unattainable: the perfect error. For instance, one opens the raw code of a PNG image file and searches for the keystone bit of data which, when traded out, will mar the image in the most interesting and unexpected way. One does not achieve the perfect digital error by gradually wearing down the original, or by incrementally educating oneself about time-tested procedures. Rather, glitching is lottery-like: an instantaneous all-or-nothing wager whose guiding principal is at best a kind of intuition and at worst a matter of dumb luck.
Notes on Glitch by Hugh S. Manon and Daniel Temkin
9. Glitch art is process art: the artist’s hand intervening in digital data leaves its mark in the visual essence of the image. The artist’s process is not exacting, but an invitation of chaos: one triggers a glitch; one does not create a glitch. The limited amount of control the artist maintains is evident in the resulting image.
10. Glitch practice is surely as much a drive-based oscillation as it is a desire-based quest. Deliberate glitches viewed on screen and on the walls of galleries do not necessarily represent “the goal.” Individual works of glitch art may just as well be residues of “the way,” i.e. a happenstance by-product of the addictively game-like occultations that typify glitch practice: change, save, view and undo; change, save, view and undo. In such an arrangement, the exhibited image, sound, or video is strictly secondary to the process: a kind of notational proof that the technique in fact worked.
11. For glitch practitioners, the distinction between accidental and purposeful is not irrelevant, but it is also not the most crucial distinction.
Within the virtual exist all the possible forms it can acquire, all the possible meanings it can represent; therefore, error, as one of these possibilities, constitutes a part of virtuality. The machine holds within it a potential for the glitch, with the possibility to generate unforeseen results.
Therefore, “malfunction and failure are not signs of improper production. On the contrary, they indicate the active production of the ‘accidental potential’ in any product”, as Paul Virilio noted.[5] Accepting error as something inherent in the machine brings us to the original meaning of the word error: a wandering in a different path, without a purpose, that can give unexpected results. In Greek, lathos originally meant something that remains hidden and imperceptible. The error reflects a lack of efficiency, but not a lack of meaning -the meaning is there, lanthanon (hidden).
“THE WILDERNESS IN THE MACHINE”: GLITCH AND THE POETICS OF ERROR | CHRISTINA GRAMMATIKOPOULOU
Bodies and machines are defined by function: as long as they operate correctly, they remain imperceptible; they become a part of the process of perception, as the extension of the action that engages the Self with the world.[1]In a world defined by efficiency, the infallible performance of bodies and systems is often taken for granted. So, what happens when failure occurs?Then the transparency (of the body, of the object) is being removed and we can finally see and sense what it actually is. A broken pencil goes back to being wood and lead –rather than a tool that inscribes our thoughts on paper; a crashed computer becomes arrays of code, software and coloured light on the screen, rather than an interface that imitates reality.The true nature of the machine –and the wilderness hidden underneath the orderly surface- suddenly makes itself evident through a glitch.[2] A glitch is a rupture in information flow, which forces the digital file out of its flawless hyperrealistic design to a reality of randomness and imperfection.
Little Bristling Soul 