9/17 Blog Post on Glitch Art and all the other stuff By Ben Adams
I honestly had no idea that glitch art existed before this class started, and I am surprised by how intricately people can view it. To me, glitches are just these weird occurrences that happen when something digital goes haywire, so I can't really relate. But the fact that people view it as almost a cultural revolution is something new to me. Add that to my also recent discovery of how deep this pit can go, with people unleashing a digital graffiti rebellion on things like simple images or even to social media pages. Again, it's a strange concept to me, especially with the way this Nick Briz guy seems to worship such ideas. It's also a sign of how the internet is something almost like what I would call an invisible nation. Although in this case its a dystopian one. Everybody wants control over this digital landscape for whatever reason they have, and nobody really seems to be winning. No matter how hard larger corporations try to maintain their copyrights, people still go ahead and do these kinds of art anyway. Simultaneously, these "artists" still struggle with said corporations. After the viewing of these videos I just have one simple question about these concepts: is it all worth it? To be honest, I'd say no, but that's just my opinion.
Nice to hear some strong dissent! I think you make a good point about some of Briz's arguments being related to "an invisible nation" as you mention, with connections to an almost anarchistic mentality. That said, Briz seems to be mostly pushing against a powerful system of capital in which private companies, with their own private financial interests, are in increasingly powerful (monopolistic) positions to dictate the ways in which we receive information, communicate with each other, and express our ideas. While this degree of control is new to our Information Age of communication, the impulse behind glitch practices are timeless. For as long as we have used tools to communicate with each other, we have challenged their systems, pushed their boundaries, and advanced our ability to be empowered participants in their uses. The impetus of glitch is to continue to push against established systems of communication in order to take control of our cultural representations. It is ALSO a good point, however, that the results of glitch art might not always be very interesting as a product! It's truly more in its relevance as a practice that we emphasize it.
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