For our glitch art project, we took images found on the Internet and opened them in TextEdit (for a Mac) as .txt files, which translates the imagery into code. Altering the code within creates "glitches" or mixed up colors and lines throughout the image when it is resaved as a .jpg file. For my images, I chose my pictures of my favorite TV and movie robots, to echo the highly digital way this art is created. In order to make the glitching meaningful, I took famous phrases or sayings that the characters would say, and periodically input them into the code. In that way, the robots in a way glitched themselves.

1. For the first one I chose the robot Bender from the TV show Futurama. In it, robots live and work alongside humans and have cheeky personalities and relationships. It is set in the year 3000, so aliens and robots alike live among us. Bender has a love/hate relationship with humans, and often "dreams" at night muttering the phrase "Kill all humans", although during the day he is a chain smoking alcoholic that is lazy and has no morals, he does maintain a friendship with his coworkers and doesn't attempt to kill them for the most part! I used his phrase "Kill all humans" throughout the image code to create the glitched one below.

2. For my second image I used a picture of C3PO from the Star Wars movies. C3PO is a very logical robot that is something of a worry wort. He is always unsure of himself and others, so I used the classic robot phrase "that does not compute" to echo his negativity.

3. For the third image I used one of my favorite "robots" of all time, who is actually an android. Just like his fellow robots above, he lives and works among humans in the future, and is even more humanoid than most of his metal counterparts. He rarely shows much emotion however, unless something had happened on the show to "glitch" him, and he turned even more human often to his detriment. In spite of his robotic interior, he was a very sentimental character, and also grappled with his less than human status. His phrase I used was "I am more than my code", which describes the complexity of Data's character.

4. The fourth image is one of my favorite childhood robots and the rare female robot - Rosie from the Jetsons. Although she took on the typical role of a robot as a servant for the family, she had a boisterous personality and was even caught on occasion crying over one thing or another. She even had relationships as well, calling into question whether she is more than "just a robot," and an interesting parallel between the suppression of certain races in our society, especially in the 1960's, when this show was first on. Her phrase is "A Robots job is never done." This took on some interesting glitch, which included almost an outline of her ghosted over the original image, suggesting that perhaps robots have souls after all...?

5. The last image is one of the robots I also watched as a child, but never really enjoyed except in an ironic way. As in - so bad its good. It is Vicki, the robot from Small Wonder. She was rather frustrating to watch, even though she was a little girl with super human strength and various robot powers, no one ever suspected her to be a robot, in spite of the fact that she never changed her outfit and spoke in a monotone robotic voice. At that time I found it simply to be annoying, but now as an adult watching old reruns I actually started to realize that Vicki had a lot of similarities to some people I know on the Autism Spectrum. I am certain the creators at the time did not intend her to be a metaphor for people with atypical neural qualities, but putting the show into the context of what is known today makes it much more poignant and meaningful. The phrase I chose for Vicki is "Autism Speaks", which is actually the name of an organization that claims they advocate for those on the Autism spectrum, but is actually not run by nor employs any people who are Autistic. It is a glitch in itself, and has made Vicki into a broken version of herself, when really there is nothing wrong with her at all.

I found glitch art to be very easy, and would be a great lesson to teach students at any age level, as long as it is used in a meaningful way, and not as a trick or a gimmick to make things look "cool." It did feel fairly easy, perhaps too easy to create imagery like this, but I would find it interesting combined with maybe other type of art, such as painting or video/animation. It definitely was an interesting way to create a postmodern type of art, substituting the computer for more traditional art media.

"What is the attraction to glitch? Or more so, why are glitch artists drawn to creating work in this genre? Is it the humanizing of what is sold to the public as perfection? The computer as perfection, a precision instrument, capable of executing complex mathematical sequences to such a high degree that we have come to accept the notion of virtual reality feasibly recreating real world experience? Does the glitch therefore become the humanizing element, exposing the machine for what it is, a man-made instrument, a tool only one layer removed from pure data represented as image? Is it the poetic element of distorting images to convey meaning?" (Donaldson, n.d.).

It is interesting to me that glitch has become its own aesthetic and something that is sought out and celebrated rather than corrected or fixed. The definition of "glitch" is "suffer a sudden malfunction or irregularity." Meaning that, originally, glitches were something that were unwanted. Nowadays, when a piece of technology or program glitches, we use it as a form of entertainment or art, and as the quote above mentions, a way to "humanize" our machine world. As mentioned in a previous post, our lives are increasingly dependent on technology. Although we don't want our devices to malfunction, it does bring them down to our level, and it is up to us whether we consider glitches to be unforgivable or not. As the saying goes "To err is human, to forgive is divine." We are in a time where we forgive our glitches and actually turn them into something good.

In the video above, the narrator shows us several glitches in the original Super Mario Bros. game. At the time the game was made, I'm unsure if these were left in on purpose or not. These days, it seems that some glitches are left into video games as sort of Easter Eggs to find as you play. It adds another level of entertainment to the game above normal play, and an air of mystery that is fun to hunt down and figure out. Other kinds of glitches, such as the ones that are purposely made in glitch art, are another form of showing that even though our lives are run by technology, we can still show machines that we are in charge.

In a classroom environment, glitch art is a great way to teach about critical thinking about the way we can use technology. Although a lot of processes that went before are automatic with certain programs or devices, we can more or less throw a wrench in the works and see what positive outcomes result. This also puts a spin on creativity - instead of finding out how we can create something, we have to figure out how we can break something in a creative way. This completely redefines how art is typically made and taught.

Reference

Donaldson, J. (n.d.). Glossing Over Thoughts on Glitch: A Poetry of Error. Retrieved from https://webcourses.niu.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-5043831-dt-content-rid-37831821_2/courses/20182-ARTE-343-----1/Donaldson%2C%20J.%20%28n.d.%29.pdf

Art & Tech Reflections