Research: Glitch

What is Glitch?

Menkman describes a Glitch as ‘a (actual and/or simulated) break from an expected or conventional flow of information of meaning within (digital) communication systems that results in a perceived accident or error’ (Menkman 2011: 9). Within the Glitch tradition these ‘individual micro-time events are integrated into larger sonic gestures, which in turn are integrated into entire pieces’ (Thompson 2004: 207). These accidental or forced sonic events are then edited together to create entire compositions. Many Glitch works only use error events, whilst others incorporate these sonic accidents into more ‘traditional’ non-noise based compositions.

While most will overlook, delete or cover up the error whilst Glitch artists exploit them, look for and force these glitches. Using these sonic artifacts to make up their musical pallets. The ‘glitch is the most puzzling, difficult to determine and enchanting noise artifact’ (Menkman 2011: 29), which can ‘either be ignored and forgotten, or transformed into an interpretation or reflection on a phenomenon’ (Menkman 2011: 27).

Errors and mistakes are all around us. And they are ever present in our lives and in the daily technologies we work and create with. The computers error messages, unexpected quits and crashes remind ‘us that that our control of technology is an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect, precise, and efficient as the humans who build them’ (Cacone 2000: 13). The more we overload our computers and the more we test their capabilities the more likely they are to fail. The unintended and misuse of ‘digital technology creates not only new possibilities for aesthetic production, but like any new technology, also opens up new possibilities for error and malfunction’ (Thompson 2004: 214).

Mistakes somehow humanise the computers that create them, allowing them a flawed beauty. Errors and mistake are dangerous, and as Nunes describes ‘mistakes allow us to go ‘astray, wandering from the intended destination. In its ‘failure to communicate’, error signals a path of escape from the predictability’ (Nunes 2010: 3) offering new avenues which can be explored sonically. He goes on to question ‘is there not something seductive in error precisely because it draws us off our path of intention, interrupting the course of goals, objectives and outcomes and pulling us towards the unintended and unforeseen? (Nunes 2010: 14). Menkman agrees by suggesting that ‘in this way, glitches announce a crazy and dangerous kind of moment(um) instantiated and dictated by the machine itself’ (Menkman 2011: 31), and goes on to suggest that allowing and experiencing the Glitch produces an ‘uncanny or overwhelming experience of unforeseen incomprehension. Experiencing a glitch is often like perceiving a stunningly beautiful, brightly coloured complex landscape’ (Menkman: 2011 30-31).

Whitehead argues that ‘it is failure that guides evolution, perfection offers no incentive for improvement’ (Cascone 2000: 13). We are taught from a young age that you learn from your mistakes, so to remove them from our composition could well stop us from moving evolving. Ignoring, overlooking and deleting errors remove the option to learn from them. As Virillo suggests ‘malfunction and failure are not signs of improper production. On the contrary, they indicate the active production of the “accidental potential” in any product. The invention of the ship implies its wreckage’ (Virillo 2005: 2). Mistakes produce potential and will often lead to new discoveries and eventually invention. 

Culturally, mistakes are frowned upon. There is only room for the ‘perfect’, as we now exist in an ‘information age utopia [that] is an error-free world of efficiency, accuracy, and predictability’ (Nunes 2010: 5), which leaves little room for variation. ‘Anything that resists systematic incorporation is cast out’ (Nunes 2010: 4). Operating within this error free existence restricts both compositionally and sonically. Working outside these restraints allow a freedom that isn’t bound by perfection, permitting the cast aside to remain.  

We are led to believe that new technologies are ‘perfect’, and when these trusted technologies inevitably fail us we are sent into a state of shock and panic. As Menkman explains ‘when a ‘trusted’ media source fails and creates a void - the void is the unknown that which cannot be described or planned for. These empty spaces of non-understanding trigger a horror vacui: a fear of voids to which nothing else can be compared’ (Menkman 2011: 30). When the trusted technology lets us down and we are faced with the interruption of failure, the error of the non-signal becomes incomprehensible. The error cannot be deciphered, which throws the viewer ‘into to a more risky realm of image and non-image, meaning and non-meaning, truth and interpretation’ (Menkman 2011: 31).

The use of error and noise within composition can be shocking, whilst the listener tries to find meaning within the sounds. As Menkman describes ‘glitch artists make use of the accident to ‘disfigure’ flow, image and information, or they exploit the void – a lack of information that creates space for deciphering or interpreting the process of creating (new kinds of) meaning’ (Menkman 2011: 33). Link adds that errors and ‘noise thinly and seductively partitions perception and meaning, recognition and understanding’ (Link 2000: 47), creating confusion for the listener, whilst they search for meaning.