Un Manifesto

The Glitch Theory

::: {COPYPASTE del manifesto} :::
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Glitch Studies Manifesto
[short, first version]. Longer parts can be found here.

1. The dominant, continuing search for a noiseless channel has been, and will always be no more than a regrettable, ill-fated dogma.
Even though the constant search for complete transparency brings new, ‘better’ media, every one of these new and improved techniques will always have their own fingerprints of imperfection.

2. Dispute the operating templates of creative practice by fighting genres and expectations!
We are all stuck in the membranes of knowledge, governed by social conventions and acceptances. As an artist I strive to reposition these membranes; I do not feel locked into one medium or between contradictions like real vs. virtual or digital vs. analog. Fight the techno religion! Surf (tube- ride) the vortex of technology, the art of artifacts.

3. Get away from the established action scripts and join the avant-garde of the unknown. Become a nomad of noise artifacts!
There are three occasions when the static, linear notion of transmitting information can be interrupted. These instances often result into noise artifacts, sub-divisible as glitch, encoding / decoding (compression) and feedback artifacts.

4. Use the glitch as an exoskeleton of progress. Find catharsis in disintegration, ruptures and fractures.
Manipulate, crack and break different actors: bend them towards the point where they become something new.

5. The gospel of glitch art sings about new models implemented by corruption.
The popularization and cultivation of the avant-garde of mishaps appears to be predestined and unavoidable. Glitches have often shown to be the early development of a next fashion, or the creation of a new archetype. These new, enchanting forms seem to be inevitably connected to the creation of new filters. Moreover, in contemporary culture, we are so used to data fraud that the ‘right way of using' does not exist anymore; instead, misuse and abuse have become new commonalities.

6. The ambiguous contingency of the glitch technotext depends on its constantly mutating materiality.
The materiality of the glitch art is not (just) the machine the work appears on. The glitch exists as an unstable assemblage in which on the one hand the construction, operation and content of the apparatus (the medium) and on the other hand the work, the writer, and the interpretation by the reader and/or user (the meaning) influence its materiality.

7. Glitch artifacts are critical trans-media aesthetics.
They are not only used to show any kind of medium in a state of hypertrophy, but also to criticize the inherent politics. I bring any medium in a critical state and while criticizing it!

The role of artifacts in critical trans media aesthetics is two fold:
* They show a medium in a critical state (ruined, unwanted, not recognized, accidental and horrendous state)
* They critique the medium (genre, interface and expectations)
Accidents transform the way we see the normal. Every accident transforms the normal
Political: they challenge the established template of creative practice and the production of theory and reflection.

8. Translate acousmatic noise and soundscapes into acousmatic video and videoscapes to create conceptual synesthesia.
The obfuscated box of technology is the new veil that shrouds the source of the output.
When artifacts from both the aural and the visual realm are used as criticial media aesthetics, they form the opportunity to create a conceptually synesthetic artwork. An artwork where synesthesia is not just a metaphor for transcoding one medium upon another, but a conceptually driven meeting of the visual and the sonic (or maybe even other senses).

9. Speak the totalitarian language of disintegration
Glitchspeak is a vocabulary of unknown rhetorics. It is not just a new, unknown form, but also an exoskeleton of progress: a new generativity.

10. Study what is outside of knowledge and teach Glitch studies! Theory is just what you can get away with!
Just like Foucault stated that there can be no reason without madness, Virilio described that there is no technological progression without the inherent accident and Gombrich describes noise in terms of breaks from patterns, we cannot understand flow without its interruption, noise without order, transparency without artifacts or glitch without a presumed function. This is why there is a need for Glitch Studies.
Glitch theory is just what you can get away with!

Compress Process (2) por R. Menkman

Vía Rosa Menkman's Blog    <3