If you’ve ever been on a Windows computer you are probably familiar with this phenomenon. You’re in a rush, so you run more applications then is good for your system, and as a result the whole thing jams. Then, when you try to drag a window it leaves it’s own, remarkable, trace. I think 99% of Windows-users knows the frustration that comes along in such a situation.
In computer jargon such a software mistake is called a ‘glitch’. The dictionary definition of glitch is:
… a sudden, usually temporary malfunction or irregularity of equipment
So the windows-phenomenon can be referred to as a glitch. But what do you do with them? If you’re not a Windows programmer you can’t fix the problem so you might as well have a little fun with it. This is probably what the British artist Ant Scott thought a few years ago when he made a series of ‘glitch art’ illustrations. Glitch art is virtually nothing but a screenshot or photograph of a graphic mistake in software. It doesn’t matter where the software is, whether it’s your computers’ operating system, a video game or the firmware of a digital television receiver (firmware is the operating system of appliances, such as a digital camera or tumble dryer).
The fun part of glitch art is that everyone can do it. If something strange occurs to you, you can record it and upload it to the ‘official’ flickr group. For example this digital TV glitch. Something like that can happen while you’re watching. Now, you might argue that this isn’t art, because you don’t create it yourself and it isn’t very original. This is where the beauty of glitch art comes in. If you know a lot about code you can hack into your software and find glitches that no other person would have found otherwise. Then you can use this knowledge to turn the software to your hand! This is a bit like circuit bending (thank you, SuperForester Chris), but with images instead of sound.
I’ll give you an example, everyone has used or heard of Photoshop. The New Yorker Daniel Temkin discovered that Photoshop does funny things if you supply it with a broken file. He broke a file (using a few complicated steps that he describes on his weblog) and opened it with PS. Then he saved the file (while PS applied it’s glitch) and here’s the result!
In my humble opinion it looks really rad. Especially if you remember yourself of the fact that it’s the result of randomness occurring in a Photoshop glitch.
Since everyone has got access to glitches I’m wondering what your experience with them is. We here at SF had our very own glitch last year back in November. Due to a bug in the blogger software all the content of our sidebar dropped to the bottom of the page. It didn’t look that nice so my bet is that it wouldn’t apply for glitch art, too bad.
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