We know of no system that functions perfectly, that is to say, without losses, flights, wear and tear, errors, accidents, opacity—a system whose return is one for one.
—Michel Serres, The Parasite
Tag: ruptures
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.
When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art
Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” 0-9 (January 1969): 4; reprinted in Art-Language 1 (1969): 11-13; and in Ursula Meyer, Conceptual Art (New York: Penguin, 1972), 174-75
Little Bristling Soul 