Glitch Aesthetics by Iman Moradi is the first formal study of glitch art that I’ve read. Moradi discusses glitch aesthetics, motivations and themes, as well as the relationship between glitch art and other movements and artists, such as Seurat, Mondrian and cubism.
“Leonardo Da Vinci insisted that ‘that painter who has no doubts will achieve little’, and he advised artists to seek out inspirations for their paintings in the stains on walls”
There’s also a formal discussion of the art of accidents, computational aesthetics and the fetishism of glitch art. In summarising the techniques used, the following techniques are explored:
- Replication/repetition
- Linearity
- Fragmentation
- Complexity
Those of you who are interested in this kind of art will appreciate the overview of prominent artists in the field. including Beflix who is helping Moradi create a book on the subject. This paper and the forthcoming book could be an excellent resource for artists and students who wish to explore this field academically, and Moradi states in the conclusion that there needs to be more formal discussion of glitch art.
I created the image above by damaging jpeg files containing an image of the Amiga’s boot screen, after reading some of the techniques used by artists in this paper.