Glitch Art in Theory and Practice

Prospects

Critical media depend on critical engagements. Specific ruptures rapidly become assimilated as signifiers within the already established formal language of the medium being glitched: this normalization elides dialogue, resistance and change—it is a procedure mirrored by social assimilation and class aspirations where lower classes mimic the fashions of higher social classes in a process that entails an uncritical adoption of forms and customs. ¹ The implicit threat this “passive acceptance” (mimicry) poses is countered by the simultaneous conception of those seeking to assimilate as disengaged “followers,” passive in their behaviors. The conception of a passive audience recasts this view of the active process required by imitation as ...