breaking bad[ly] glitch art series- Nina Wenhart
JPEG Glitch inspired painting - Andy Deckler
Since Aphex Twin inundated the 90's with their creepy synthetic strains, the internet era has revolutionized the art world. The digitization of communication media has had a profound effect on visual language, which has been forced to evolve along with the ideas it represents.
An interesting side effect of this change is the creation of glitch art. According to Wikipedia, the term glitch comes from the German word glitschig, which means "slippery", and refers to "the unexpected result of a malfunction". This anomaly has risen from the propensity of technology to screw up. We've all experienced that teeth grinding hair pulling sensation when several hours of fruitless button pushing fail to rectify a skipping disk or a flawed program. Fortunately, human creativity can triumph over the machine by turning the frustration of the cracked image into art.
As proven by the above images, the "unexpected" can be beautiful. The two artists whose work is pictured have aestheticized flawed, pixelated images to turn a TV clip or a broken image into a compelling stand alone work.
As with all art, or all human output, for that matter, you have to sift through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff. Upon searching 'glitch art' in Google, I immediately decided that I hated it. Images in garish colours with jarring or poorly thought out composition bombarded my retinas. However, further inspection modified my opinion as I discovered that not ALL of the art displayed sub par visuals or lack of consideration - just most.
One possible reason why glitch art seems so hit or miss is its accessibility. Anyone with a computer and an imagination can crack an image. YouTube tutorials or Yahoo! Answers will walk you through the logistics, or you can simply download a program to corrupt your image for you. It is obscenely easy to make a piece and upload it.
Although this makes for of a lot of ugly art, the freedom of it and the proliferation of creation it allows is delicious. The internet has made possible an unprecedented amount of information sharing and communication, be it visual or textual. If that freedom is used to create, I'll take it.
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