How Does Glitchy Art Show Us Broken Is Beautiful? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios
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- Опубликовано: 23 июл 2013
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We all love broken things. WAIT WHAT?! Yes, you read that correctly. You may have noticed this thing called "glitch", where people purposely push machines to malfunction, creating fascinating "mistakes". But instead of being frustrated and disdainful of these errors (like we usually do when our technology fails mid-workflow, grrr) we find them to be bizarrely beautiful! Why are we so interested in these images, music, or objects that are structurally or formally broken? Watch the episode and find out!
Links:
Milo Hartnoll JPG Portraits:
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How to Do Circuit Bending:
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Circuit Bent Speak & Spell
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Datamoshing Test Sequence #1
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Kinect Dance Shoot
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Glitch Cabinet by Ferruccio Laviani:
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Classical Greek Sculpture GIFS by Zach Dougherty
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Text Visualized as Music:
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Phillip Stearns
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Video Footnote:
Paul M. Leonardi - Digital materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter
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Music:
"Europe" by Roglok (www.roglok.net)
"Carry on Carillon" by Roglok (www.roglok.net)
"Bouncy Castle" by Roglok (www.roglok.net)
":P" by Roglok (www.roglok.net)
Level 5: Room for the Homeless
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Binarpilot
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In the cartoon movie Wreck It Ralph, the main character is a "glitch", and is arguably the most lovable character in the movie. And not in spite of the fact that she's a glitch, but largely because of it. It illustrates the imperfectness of a character and makes her relatable.
They are truly beautiful! This shows how the most unexpected things can become cute and mind blowing works of art, in this case as a result of them giving an odd sense of satisfaction.
This is what is great about art! These "broken" things are showing us a new perspective. They are not simply things, but objects that make us feel or think...it doesn't matter if it's a positive or negative response either, it affected you for that moment.
I have to say the beauty of glitch art is that it is attractive in the simplest of way. Not in that is is beautiful or pleasing to the eye, but it literally ATTRACTS your attention. It's a blatant flaw in perfection. You know on some level that it isn't "right" therefore it sticks in your head and causes you to think.This gives it a mesmerizing quality. That means it's only natural to attempt to emulate it.
"Destruction is a form of creation"
-Donnie Darko
could this love of digital brokenness, and finding beauty in malfunction, be a modern digital age form of the old Japaneses aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi? where there is beauty in broken or imperfect objects.
Things of my childhood that I will always savor:
The pop-pop of a record before the music starts playing,
the ever-changing deluge of white noise on a TV screen,
the sound of a PC singing to the Internet through a phone line.
The readiest example of broken being better that I can think of was a kitchen timer I was given as a little kid. The part that made it tick was busted so that when wound it would spin to 0 and ding in a second or so. It actually spun with enough force that it would spin its self around when it hit the internal stop. While a regular kitchen timer would have been boring the broken one was played with for quite a few hours by little me.
I actually had a friend of a friend who would mess with Speak and Spells to create really wonky noises in the early 2000s. Even sold them to a few mainstream artists I think.
+FunkyHonkyCDXX i feel so bad for you you you have like more than 10x the vids of this utuber and you have less than 1% of his subs but idk how many views views=money i think?
Tahmeed Amin Eh, it's just a hobby.
FunkyHonkyCDXX well hope you get more subs
at 5:00 an error occurred in my video and I glared at my tv for about 30 seconds not sure if I was being fucked with or the video actually glitched out.. gg youtube
This conversation really reminds me of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where you take broken ceramics, put them back together and fill the cracks with gold, to highlight the imperfections. The idea is that it has become something different and beautiful in an entirely new way, and thus this new form should be embraced and admired in its brokenness. Check it out!
DUBSTEP DANCE sums this up pretty well. The Dubstep dance videos are the ones where you can't tell if the video is playing properly because the errors look so real, or the reality looks so error-y.
David O'Reilly does the best digital glitchy artwork I've ever seen (he directed Adventure Time's a Glitch is a Glitch) and as far as music is concerned I LOVE Amon Tobin (though technically it's IDM). But there's glitchy genres on di.fm also if you're curious about how a glitch may sound :-)
True I loved David O'Reilly!
Anyways I like "Aphex Twin" album "Drukqs".
You should check Richard's music if you love IDM, Breakcore and Ambient.
I heard of Aphez Twin, I like a bunch of his songs (like Windowlicker :P).
What's "Richard"? Tell me more I'll check it out on Spotify.
Strangeryann Richard is often called "Aphex Twin".
By the way I have a lot of more favourite artists than only one.
Oh right haha K I dinn kno that.
K so what are your favourite artists :D?
Me Im a die hard fan of Gorillaz, Amon Tobin, Digitalism, Röyksopp, Slagsmålsklubben, Boards of Canada, Caravan Palace, Air, Ez3kiel, The M Machine, Mylo, Plaid, Simian, Simian Mobile Disco, Siriusmo, Soulwax, Ulrich Schnauss, Vitalic.
Your turn then :D
Strangeryann
Squarepusher
Venetian Snares
Philips Glass
Autechre
Richard Devine
Akufen
Tech Diff
Weyheyhey!!
Xanopticon
Ryoji Ikeda
Igorrr
Florian Hecker
Yasunao Tone
Osamu Sato
Passenger of Shit
Ben Frost
Nasum
Higher Intelligence Agency
Steve Reich
Irresistible Force
Reizoko CJ
Deru
Hijokaiden
William Basinski
Xäcksecks
Pan Sonic
Merzbow
Mouse on mars
Com truise
Lifelike
Anitek
Drumcorps
glue70
The Berzenker
Breaking a kitkat is much better than not.
In 1979 , Romanian poet Nichita Stănescu wrote a poetry volume called 'Imperfect works'.The opening poem it's called 'The lesson about the cube' .I that poem, an artist sculpts what seems a perfect cube, only to shatter one of it's corners in the end, knowing that everybody would think:'What a perfect cube this would have been, if only it didn't have a shattered corner...'. The smart thing is that the artist made people think of their own perfect cube, without phisically showing it to them.
Boards of Canada, in their early materials, used things like tape-distortion effects and "old TV" fuzz and it blew minds all over the planet. Listening to it still feels like playing with some hidden nostalgia-nerve, like these shimmering childhood sensations you can only barely remember but are immediately gripped and fascinated by.
Your ex girlfriend - the ultimate universal experience of the allure and desire of the beauty inherent in something broken and dead
Grim Squeaker I wish she was dead..... too far?
We all been there man - it's ok
+Grim Squeaker yes we have right everyone?
YTP
Nobody else gonna thumb up this guy's comment? Fine, I'll be the first. Because that's what this video is essentially all about.
I would if I knew what it meant
jack basedgod See some of the following:
The Misadventures of Skooks part 4/9
Dipper Plays Video Games
The Fesh Pince of Blair
Cookie Monster and the Case of the Mysterious Ticking Snickerdoodle
***** RUclips Poop is still funny though,
in one it said,"Or Plankton, of the Cum Bucket"
I love youtube Poop
In my opinion, the machine doesn't express itself, it just interpretates the human's act of inducing the corruption by data bending. This makes the majority of glitches human induced. Even when we see glitches in games, those are just human errors that show up under specific conditions. The only "true" glitches may be those who happen by hardware consumption by aging.
There are some broken Japanese porcelain antiques that are stuck back together and painted with gold paint in the cracks to highlight the flaws and the brokeness of the object because it makes it more beautiful.
Kintsugi.
Super-late, but I came down here specifically to leave this comment. :)
Carbono 12 キンツギ？Got it, 金継ぎ！
New champions at League of Legends are better when they're broken.
I saw a quote from Brian Eno in 1995 the other week that talked about this. "It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. [...] The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them."
The first thing I thought of when seeing the title "Broken is Beautiful" was a heart. (of a living person, animal, or thing) Whether how deranged, obscure or twisted, a "broken" heart has a sort of... Gravity, so to say, that draws people in, whether it be the story behind how said heart of said thing became so strange, whether it be that someone finds comfort via similar or relatable aspects of it, or whether it be by pure curiosity, the "broken seem to possess some sort of extra... Thing, that others don't that in turn make them more fascinating. (Hope to see what others think of this)
Feminism is so hypocritical.
+seth chizmar How is this related to the video
I ate my dog
Glitches in video games can create experiences that no one ever expected and can make the game so much better. Like once I was walking along in Skyrim and saw something flying towards me and assumed it was a dragon. As it came closer I realized it was a guy on a horse, and I spent the next half hour watching him pinball off trees in the forest and laughing hysterically.
Broken things can only be considered beautiful, as long as you don't need it to be working (perfectly). So when I want to watch the news, I don't want my TV to go all fuzzy and colormixing and stuff, but when I just lean back and watch something for the sole purpose of watching it, it's great.
Outside of art, broken things make us better as people. It's a way of discovering what it is that we don't want and then finding a way to make sure it doesn't happen. Eg, broken phone (get a new phone), broken shelf (fix it), broken heart (move on) etc etc. Making art out of glitches and overall brokenness is a way for us to appreciate what goes into making stuff work.
I would also add to this, that the fact that film cameras are popular again is also connected with the unpredictability of the outcome. Old half-broken cameras produce all kinds of interesting effects such as changing colours, adding effects, light leaks etc. So the process of taking photos becomes exciting.
A message to PBS! Whatever you do, KEEP THIS SHOW! Seriously. I mean it!
In art school we used to talk about 'Art Vivant'. Basically, you work on your thing paint/sculpt/whatever, then you stop to reflect on it (like looking at clouds) and you help it be what it tries to be. I tried it when I messed up. I had this photo-montage-collage on a mirror, it fell and it crackled a LOT but it looked just awesome! paint spills, glued together canvas... It's impossible to erase the mistake but if you work with it you can make something new, exciting and intriguing!
The idea of creating something broken and viewing it as art is about reminding ourselves of the true objectivity of emotions associated with it. It's a way to stretch the mind outside of whatever social norms we've constructed and view as natural, even though they really aren't.
I'm glad you mentioned Autechre. Autechre/Gescom is definitely sound-as-music (aka "Musique Concrète" though I hate that term, but you can look it up in Wiki; it's an interesting read). Their recent release, "Exai", appears to be equal parts precisely-constructed beats/notes and random glitch. However, they've been pretty transparent as to how they get to a track: They input some triggers, and then they let their custom algorithms work away as they tweak. Crazy stuff!
This is absolutely brilliant. There is a beauty in chaos. I think that the malfunction enjoyment isn't arising from some nostalgia reaction, but by seeing the balance of the distortion. But this could be just a shot in the wind
I know it's not as hi-tech as glitch art, but this episode reminded me of the logic behind photographers using old, broken or toy-like cameras and expired film. Depending on how broken or expired, it can yield crazy results. I think this also explains the popularity of vintage photo apps because those malfunctions are aesthetically pleasing to a lot of people today. P.S. this channel rocks!
Mentioning the Glitch Mob after talking about expectations. I wasn't expecting that.
This was among my favorite videos on this channel - alongside the knock off supporting the true brand, cell phones warping our reality, and Instagram being good for photography.
Is it possible that the reason people love the "broken" aspect is it is a throw back to a time when we were able to somewhat fix things without having a degree in Computer Science, whether it be blowing into a NES cartridge or using your pencil to fix your favorite tape that your boom box just ate. And who can forget the pure bliss of playing with the tracking control to get the picture just right on your VHS copy of Transformers that you had watched till the tape was stretched out.
I'm sure this is in a somewhat different context from what is intended, but deliberate imperfections in elements within a movie can make the movie more realistic. The chipped paint around the edges of a piece of futuristic armor. The grease stains on the walls. Imperfect lighting, and 'camera mistakes' in a scene that is almost entirely if not one hundred percent digitally animated. They make the constructed world feel less pristine, but more real, even when you have giant mech suits beating the shit out of extradimensional monsters ( and yes, all of the examples listed above are related ;) watch the extras for Pacific Rim ). They're elements that construct an air of reality around an inherently unrealistic series of events, helping to pull the whole affair out of the uncanny valley.
I think something broken can be a good thing in many situations but a specific example I want to focus on is video games. When the world glitches out, when you fall through the walls, get an item you weren't supposed to get yet. You are given the chance to explore the game in a whole new way. Which is almost artistic, because part of art is getting you to see the world in a different way.
I think that because technology is lately becoming such a huge and integral part of our lives, were finding new ways to deal with it emotionally. I feel like enjoying glitched art is kind of like looking for souls in the digital machines we use so much everyday, and in doing so, trying to express an emotional connection with what we experience in our digitalized day to day life.
I've officially watched ALL of your videos! My husband and I have deep discussions about practically every video! Thank you for stimulating my mind.
There is a term, wabi-sabi, where beauty is found in decay as it highlights the transience of all things. Ruined buildings, abandoned tracks, and old toys have fascinated artists for a long time, and have been used or represented in artwork. We are drawn to what remains. And for modern technology, the state of being broken/glitchy - not working as we intend it to - is the equivalent of a house with creaking floorboards, cracked cabinets, and no roof.
I do want to point out that if your computer/TV/Console suddenly starts glitching and weird stuff shows, you wouldn't be awed or appreciating it as art, you would be cursing at it and screaming or something, so I guess that it is beautiful whenever it is not interfering with whatever you are doing in that moment because you want that to work. Nice episode btw.
Also, Fez is a great example of the meaning of glitches. When playing through the first level, your game starts as a standard 2D platformer. The game world is literally broken by the appearance of the Cube, and the game "glitches out" and "reboots" to show that you must surrender your previous expectations of reality.
It's also a pretty fun game with some tough-ass puzzles.
This makes me think of avant garde filmmakers scratching film or splicing random found footage together, William S. Burroughs' "Sound Piece", and even scratching in rap. Every one of those exemplifies the notion of an artist taking what would commonly be seen as a mistake, and, in conjunction with the peculiarities of the medium in question, making something new and intriguing.
MissingNo from Pokemon Red and Blue is a really great example of how broken is better. The programming glitch was embraced by fans not only for the interesting series of steps you needed to take to find it, but also for the nifty feature of multiplying your items when you encountered it.
This reminds me of Melanie Willhide´s story, which is ispretty interesting.
She is a photographer in LA who had her laptop, with all her photos, stolen.
Some time later, the police returned her laptop only for her to find that the thief had erased all her pictures.
When she had them recovered by professionals, the photos had been corruped, resulting in very cool effects. She then put them up for display.
Even todays technology can make pretty cool mistakes
Recently on a road trip with my mom, we were listening to some old scratched cds we found in the car. Although they could still play, they would skip and get stuck on certain words or noises, creating an almost dub step effect on the songs. We found it to be a hilarious improvement.
Glitches also become part of our culture, as a shared experience that we can relate to. Everyone has a story about how in Skyrim the dead npc started flying, or how in Fallout their game save was corrupted and unplayable, or when using Vista and it bluescreens. We can sympathize with those people while also getting entertainment out of the bizarre nature of the glitch. In short they don't always make things better but create a shared experience that we can parody or reference.
I think it can be said that a certain form of art is simply things we cannot truly understand, but enjoy looking at and trying to understand it, and that this is what category of art this would fall under
Hello Mike, I've stumbled on your channel few days ago and in two days I've watched all your videos. In conclusion, you are awesome! Especially from one particular reason. In your videos you are combining art, science and technology from diferent, but very interesting perspective, which I find amazing :) so keep going.
VSauce mentioned in one of his recent videos this photographer, Melanie Willhide, who had her laptop stolen and the photos she'd taken when she'd gotten the laptop back where glitchy and broken, but in a really awesome way. So awesome that she ended up doing a gallery of it anyway, naming it after the man that stole her laptop.
I have to say, I love the way tech used to be made, that either it was only "glitching" and fun/ flustering to deal with. Or being able to "Frankenstein" things back to life with older and newer parts. Thus having something completely original. And hopefully more durable. Now to fix something I feel like I need a miracle and a PhD.
This reminds me of that one episode of Arthur where they spoke about the memories they had with their broken bikes. How for example, Francine had her bike bent after an accident and that was something she would now remember. Almost as if humanizing the object and treating it as someone you can share memories with. So I guess that's an example of how something broken can be good.
I had a framed pair of jeans from my teenage years, in a fit of rage against some of the regrets of my past I cracked the perspex. Now it stands (to me) as a monument to times that were "good, but never perfect". Plus you know, the cracks look cool.
Ahhhh this is the sort of Idea Channel episode that I personally very, very much enjoy.
Brilliant!
As an artist (Graphic Designer) this is well worn ground, many of my favorite work utilized Spontaneous Composition, Imprecise Mediums, & Happy Accidents; but I may just be a bit of a Dadaists in that way. Glad to see it in new forms.
As a person of faith the beauty of brokenness is also well worn ground, but not really in the way you mean. Out of the choir of voices that have spoken on this, Tyler Durden comes to mind; but I may just be a bit of a broken in that way.
My high school choir teacher had a theory that if a choir sang a song too perfectly, it would almost be unpleasant to listen to. In music, especially choral music, the contrast of the different parts is what makes the music beautiful. Imperfect voices coming together to make something ultimately beautiful.
I found it in the garage a few years later, and after replacing the batteries, I learned that the sound box was slightly glitched out. Instead of going "aww, man! It's broken now!", I thought "Dude! This sounds WAY cooler than it did when I was a kid!"
So, yeah. Those are my thoughts on glitch artwork.
For a long time, the mysterious unknown has been a source of inspiration and fear, with horror stories and tales of spirits, beasts and curses. It's interesting to note that the "creepypasta" phenomenon shows that technological glitches are entering that category of the "mysterious unknown". People are now telling scary tales about broken games- the ghost is now literally in the machine.
I'll be honest about something: 'Glitchy' things scare me. A lot. If something in a video game looking as simple as, say, Super Mario suddenly has sprites appearing miscoloured, upside down and at two times the speed.. It means that something is wrong. And something being 'wrong' always has a bad connotation.
Like a person with black eyes, a pig just floating by or the moon being literally close enough for you to touch without anything besides specifically that having changed.
As long as something like that isn't pushed into the ridiculous or comedic, something feels wrong and uncanny. Uncomfortable.
I don't know how many people share my stance on this, but "Broken is Beautiful" is about as far away from my perception as possible.
I've just discovered glitch art today. Man it's beautiful. I've known about glitch music for over a year, but I found out about glitch art today. This is so cool.
3 separate uses of dance to explain your point? you just made this dance teacher super happy! :) kudos sir!! :)
When I was twelve, my friend and I watched The Ring on a thirty-years-old tv. It was thirty times as scary as our pretty then-lcd screen.
"It's like... Did you ever try to put a broken piece of glass back together? Even if the pieces fit, you can't make it whole again the way it was. But if you're clever, you can still use the pieces to make other useful things. Maybe even something wonderful, like a mosaic."
- Moira Brown, Fallout 3
I think the expression of this broken art that I most commonly see is video game corruptions, which is basically when people purposely change something about the game's bits (I don't know the exact thing that happens). They're interesting because of how hilariously broken it is possible to make them while still having them function enough to be observed and a lot of times even still played.
I was surprised to see that you guys didn't even mention Melanie Willhide, the photographer who had her computer stolen. She made a whole exhibit using corrupted photos that had been recovered after it had been wiped. It's not necessarily a "failure of technology" per se, but it's definitely in the style of the photos talked about here, and it's pretty amazing.
This is likely the result of a short. Vocals are typically mixed center, meaning left and right both have the same vocals. The instruments tend to be panned slightly (especially drums). When there's an electrical issue with the headphones or jack, you can basically end up referencing the sum of both channels instead of the ground wire, and that would show the symptoms you suggest. (Typical "karaoke plugins" work by inverting one of the channels so that the center-panned things cancel.)
I personally love glitchy art because it seems so tragic and sad, but also beautiful.
I always thought of glitch music as the continuation of the musique concrete movement, but fully realized in the information era, while the visual arts is more connected to the "new aesthetic", which has to to with the analogy between the eye and the camera. For me they are united by the unexpected abstractness of them, which is new and refreshing. Particularly in music, where a kind of white/grey noise is the ultimate expression of the complexity we have been moving towards.
the beauty of the glitch lies in the unintentional and the unpredictable, to coerce glitches out of the machine, or worse, to merely imitate the glitch aesthetically, is to remove all that makes the glitch wonderful, to cause it to lose all meaning
It's really interesting to see things like Glitch Life, which randomize everything (textures, entites, props and sounds). You are the first and only one that experience this actual set of variables. This puts me to thinking... is this actually some kind of art?
I think the reason we like the broken things sometimes and not other times is because if our computer glitches out, it's blocking us from doing something we want to do at the moment. With glitchy artwork though, it kind of shows us how complicated technology is. It shows us what happens if one thing doesn't work juuuuusst the way it's supposed to, and it ends up pretty interesting.
This reminds me of an interview I once heard with Devo. They had a broken synthesizer that made a cool sound that they liked. One day the synth stopped working so they brought it to a repair shop and asked the have it fixed, but not totally fixed.
Glitches caused by a dirty game cartridge in Homestuck are being used as a plotpoint and to obfuscate information that is to be revealed later, among other uses. The last big flash animation used a little glitch art.
I saw photographs that were a result of overwritten data. A thief stole a photographer's laptop. and it was found again. The pictures were recovered, but the photographs were "ruined". The artist used them anyway.
When broken things can be better than the functional originals: abandoned buildings. The internet is brimming with great photos of gorgeous abandoned structures that have a sort of surreal and haunting beauty all their own. Certain architectural styles that many might find ugly *coughbrutalismcough* can actually become beautiful when abandoned, overgrown, and decayed.
a photographer called Melanie Willhide had her laptop stolen, she managed to recover it but some of the pictures were overwrote, they look 'broken' and amazing
I think the main factor that makes glitch art so beautiful is the intent. People are going to have a much different reaction when their computer/vcr freaks out when they don't want it to than when the glitch is intentional. Similarly, that is also what makes glitch art, "art." Art is only art when you want it to be art, so glitches are only going to be viewed as beautiful in a setting or context where the glitches are to be viewed as art.
In Japanese culture there is a process called Kintsukuroi. in which a broken item of china or pottery, say, a plate or cup, is repaired along it's fracture lines with gold or silver etc. Then the item is put back into use and the process tries to bring about the understanding that the item is now more beautiful having been broken.
I think this ties in with what others are saying about the progress of technology and its effect on art- when photography came along, there was more abstractism (not that there wasn't ANY before), etc. But I think it really boils down to our fascination with the unexpected.
I feel like this is why glitch art seems so extraordinary- because human intention is basically mocked and human interpretation is limited by the reality its trapped in.
We usually think about art being painted on a medium by a person, but in glitch art, something profoundly not human paints the medium and humanity is simply not necessary and if anything, is eager to create meaning for the sake of self-relevance.
I have a theory about horror movies, that the great ones are beloved because they connect something in our heads, showing us a manifestation of what we can only vaguely imagine; I think that must be therapeutic somehow. Maybe glitched art does the same thing in a different way, showing us the full extent to which electronics and computers can and might "break" the world we love. Looking at the manifestation of it might be somehow calming and exciting all at once bc it connects with that anxiety.
Genetic code is better broken because that is how we evolved into beings capable of appreciating such phenomenon.
When things break a bit and become finicky we tend to ascribe emotions, will, and sentience to them (eg: it plays it how it wants, express something of itself, it doesn't like when I do that, etc). I think when this subconscious personification is carried over to glitch art it gives us a better framework on which to empathize with, if not the art itself, the artist and what they're trying to portray, leading to a more intense emotional connection and perhaps a more effectively conveyed message.
An excellent example of the broken used in narrative is Linkara's "entity" story arc which reimagines the broken pokemon "missingno" as a mulitverse-spanning god. RUclips hates links in comments, but the wiki article on the arc is pretty easy to find using your search engine of choice.
as for the question of why we like glitchy art, I think a non negligeable part is how it's both familiar (games we played, objects we see everyday...) and unknown(since it takes shapes we would not see otherwise). this makes the thing either kind of creepy or kind of funny, feelings we tend to look for.
I think it is all about reduction. My architect-Mentor said that one must throw his model and let it tumble around the stairs. On the way, its leftovers will come apart, and the model itself will be thus refined. glitches are the stairs, through the abstracions they make it possible for us to see the fundamental beauty of the art work.
I feel like there's poetry in the use of glitches to disarm the consumer in a situation where they traditionally have all of the control. For example, making a song with a long intro in such a way that it cannot be fast-forwarded reinforces the true name behind it's enjoyment: that of the author.
The Chuck Taylor All Star shoe sure looks better when it is slightly broken or heavily used.
It just gives it a more comfortable and casual look and it kind of makes them unique!
Glitchy art is an acceptable thing, there was a woman once who had her camera stolen by a thief. He deleted all the files on the camera, but when she got the camera back she managed to restore soe files. Those files were glitched (overwritten with other data) but still she made an exhibition of those pictures, both in spite of the thief and as an experiment. The exhibition was a huge success and she earned quite the story on the way.
I think that because of the rapid improvement/changes in technology, 'glitches' almost give people a sense of security- by finding mistakes we aren't so intimidated by the "technological uprising" that we perhaps feel threatened by
Kinda why I like quite a bit of Sachin Teng's illustrations. Captures some of the glitchiness in a really cool way.
Sometimes "glitch" can happen as sort of a happy accident rather than a "mistake" as is the case with Melanie Willhide's "To Adrian Rodriguez with love." The "beauty" of a particular broken piece of art depends on the narrative surrounding it or the lack of. Like Bella Ferraro's forgetting lines emotional glitches cause the same beauty. Since glitches involves mystery we tend to fill in the blanks positively and reminds us it is okay to makes "mistakes"
Or, they're like a device's folk songs. A glitch artist friend of mine subscribes to Ian Bogost's notion of object-oriented ontology, the idea that all physical objects--living and non-living--partake equally in existence. Glitch, then, allows us to "do carpentry (Bogost's term)" and discover ways of deriving the nature of that existence. Thanks for this one, guys!
I related this directly to the mind, and how it adapts to serve functions when parts are missing or broken. Without getting into extreme of accidents and and actual missing parts.. the subtle things you can tell differs from the average, and given the actual state of affairs can't be pinpointed without drowning in a mud of subjectivity (and maybe DSM volumes) and how this acknowledgement of what appears to be broken ends up as the source of what could be perceived as beauty.
This episode's discussion hearkens a lot to the traditional Japanese art philosophy of "Wabi-Sabi", which is loosely translated to mean "The Art of Imperfection".
Wabi-Sabi art attempts to explore authenticity by depicting art that is unfinished, visibly aging, or outright broken.
The philosophy behind these pieces are along the lines of "nothing lasts" and "nothing is perfect", which is an idea that could be explored in explaining people's interest in glitch art.
I feel it's all about intention. We don't enjoy broken VCRs because it wasn't intended to do it. Glitchy art on the other hand has an intention of portraying certain images or sounds in a "broken" fashion. When we see that there is intention, then we start to appreciate the art. A good example is with rhett and link's intentionally bad local commercials.
In the days where my father fancied himself as a photographer, he once took a picture of a glass chalice. He accidentally nudged the camera as he did, and the result was three chalices broken down by colours on a black background. I had it as my book cover thoughout all secondary school :)
And how come no mention of the cutest glitch ever, Vanellope von Schweetz??
Pt. 2:
Also, broken objects (reverting back to materialism here, since I don't know much about GIFs and the like), especially our enchanted objects, evoke feelings of tenderness and desire to care for them, more so than perfection. It heightens emotional experience in a different way than what we've become accustomed to.
For glitched media, I'd look at Rayman Legend's last level. The whole gimmick of it is that it makes you survive different broken things from the 80s: Sceens fuzzing out, flipping upside down, multiplying screens, warped screens, and other things I can't remember. It's cool.