Within contemporary art practice a certain trend has generated that includes the creation and/or appropriation of low resolution images and videos. In her essay In Defence Of The Poor Image, Steyerl (2009) defines the poor image as “a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution” (my emphasis) (p.1). While in her writing Steyerl (ibid) specifically refers to low resolution images, it is quite immediate to understand how the concepts she expresses can be easily applied into discourses around glitch and glitch art.
Steyerl describes the poor image as “the contemporary Wretched of the Screen, the debris of audio-visual production, the trash that washes up on the digital economies' shore” (2009:1). Similarly, the glitch has generally been understood in a negative connotation as unwanted or abnormal. In digital culture, though, the positive consequences of the glitch are often emphasised by showing the new possibilities they facilitate. “A glitch is a singular dysfunctional event that allows insight beyond the customary, omnipresent, and alien computer aesthetics […] A glitch is the loss of control. When the computer does the unexpected and goes beyond the borders of the commonplace” (Goriunova and Shulgin, 2008:114). Menkman (2011) as well argues in favour of glitch artifacts underlying how these events stimulate novel models of creative practice by challenging conventions, norms and believes (p.6). Equally Steyerl (2009) presents the low resolution image as capable of defying “promises of digital technology” (p.1)
Many of today’s contemporary digital artists, has come to embrace low resolution events, especially glitch artifacts, as means of circumventing certain codified and commodified traditions. As said above, as artists search for more personal and authentic forms of expression, low resolution serve as both as an opportunity for such expression while also providing means for critique against existing traditions and structures of visual language. “Glitch becomes a revolutionary tool as a correction against the status quo, for invisible and marginalised groups to assert their relevance” (Ling, 2016). Some artists see glitch as a mean to explore themes around society, gender and identity, while some are motivated by the glitch’s potential to bring to light the politics embedded in our technology.
Goriunova and Shulgin (2008) write that glitch “shows the ghostly conventionality of the forms by which digital spaces are organised” (p.114). Glitches remind us of the ideology of convention, which includes assumptions that users have up-to-date platforms, legally acquired software and access to customer support, and that users’ computers are able to stream data at optimal speeds on reliable electric systems. Thus conventions of optimal performance assume an ideal system, which is not always the case. Most companies design their products to become obsolete, forcing dependent users of their platforms to keep upgrading. The costs of keeping up to date are significant for many users in wealthy countries, and are out of the question for most users in poorer countries. According to Goriunova and Shulgin (ibid), the glitch releases that tension: “When the computer does the unexpected, it releases the tension and hatred of the user toward an ever-functional but uncomfortable machine” (p). Steyerl (2009) likewise, explains how this opportunity is brought about because of low resolution events “[they]express all the contradictions of the contemporary crowd: its opportunism, narcissism, desire for autonomy and creation, its inability to focus or make up its mind, its constant readiness for transgression and simultaneous submission” (p.6)
As said above, the glitch has a potential to disclose the often unrecognised politics embedded in out technological systems. “Technology is not neutral; any given technology’s characteristics are not simply determined by its utilitarian agenda, they are also— consciously or not — symptomatic of their producer’s worldview” (Briz, 2015:7). In Thoughts On Glitch Art (2015) new media artist Nick Briz explains the ‘glitch ethic’ as a way of working with technology that opposes its traditional and expected or instructed uses. “[Glitch art] is about consciously doing things the wrong way. That is how you discover new ways to ‘glitch’ as an artist, but also more generally new ways of using as a user, thus new perspectives on the technologies and digital network environments upon which we increasingly depend”(p.6). Nunes (2011) as well sees error as a chance to actively rails against a technology embedded ideology offering an opportunity of resistance in a society increasingly dominated by information structures and by logic of maximum performance. “Error provides a critical path worth pursuing, one that suggests a potential immanent in—yet excluded from—systematic control” (p.21).
Having said that, it is important to notice how the concept of glitch art is often subject to criticism. Much debate encompass the question of whether a glitch can be instigated and of whether an intended glitch could be considered a real glitch. Arguably, what is at stake here is not the glitch per se, but the act of misusing a certain technology purposely going against its instructed uses in order to convey a message of resistance. Glitch artists, or more in general digital artists which fetishise low resolution and glitch aesthetics, may find that participating in the creation of glitch artifacts help them regain some agency in the digital space. But then again, by appropriating, reproducing, ripping and remixing content, as Steyerl (2009) suggests, users are yes, operating against “the fetish value of high resolution,” yet also playing further into commercial capitalism (p.7). Then we could say that, like the poor image, glitch artifacts have an ambivalent characterisation. As the poor image, the glitch “is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation. In short: it is about reality” (p. 8).
In conclusion, low resolution events help us make broader, more global connections, they help tear down walls and disrupt the status quo, and they provide means to further question and understand our contemporary experience. Glitch and its interfering siblings arise in imperfect conditions, glitch artists are among those who abandon the search for a sharp, faithful, ‘lossless’ image and instead look with curiosity at the conditions that cause loss, ‘artifacts’ and poor resolution (Downey, 2014:270). As Menkman (2011) claims they challenge technology inherent politics and the traditional methods of creative practice while producing a theory of reflection.