Glitch Art in Theory and Practice

1Origins of “Glitch” in The Stoppage

Glitch is not necessarily a new or specifically digital form. Whether in audible or visible media, technical failures have been employed for decades. ¹ Engagement with mechanical, automated processes and the (mal)function of machines is a recurring theme of avant-garde art in the twentieth century. However, digital artists are not engaged in such basic issues of engineering that they are developing their own custom chips in a fashion equivalent to historical artists such as Thomas Wilfred or Mary Hallock-Greenewalt who invented, then patented novel hardware designs; more like the artist who codes their own software, glitch artists engage the material of digital code through practices that modify existing systems; ...