Glitch, the Post-digital Aesthetic of Failure and Twenty-First-Century Media. (February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kemper, Jakko
• Other Names: Rutten Ellen guest-editor.; de Vos Ruby guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: European journal of cultural studies. Volume 26:Number 1(2023)
• Page Start: 47
• Page End: 63
• Publication Date: 2023-02
• Subjects: Glitch -- imperfection -- post-digital culture -- spectrality -- 21st-century media; Culture -- Periodicals; Culture -- Popular -- Periodicals; Culture -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Cross-cultural studies -- Periodicals; 306.05
• DOI: 10.1177/13675494211060537
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1367-5494

Abstract

This paper aims to understand how everyday life is affected by new technological conditions through an inquiry into glitch, a concept that signifies moments of faulty interference in the regular operation of a technology and that is often labeled a ghost in the machine. By drawing on two concepts from cultural studies – spectrality and post-digital culture – it demonstrates how the imperfection-oriented aesthetic of glitch is today complicated by the technological tendency to bypass human awareness. By developing this argument through a reading of German electronic music group Oval's influential glitch-based record 94diskont (1995), the paper shows how glitch's signification of mediation, fragility and technological complexity has been modulated in recent years. This analysis is augmented through a consideration of Mark B.N. Hansen's concept of 'twenty-first-century media', which takes as highly significant the tendency of contemporary media to operate beyond the thresholds of human cognition and perception. The paper suggests that, as a result of these new medial forms, the subversive potential of glitch-based artworks is impacted severely, but also that glitch's status of ghost in the machine offers valuable resources for thinking through the media experiences afforded by 21st-century media. This paper thereby points to new potential modes of critique, and expands existing cultural debates about aesthetics, technology, and the constitution of everyday life.