Glitch Moment/um (2011)
Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, December, 2011.
The Glitch Moment/um is the title of a small booklet I published in 2011. In the publication, I describe the moment of encountering a glitch as twofold:
First there is the moment the glitch happens, which is often experienced as an uncanny break of an expected technological flow or threatening loss of control. In this moment, the user or spectator doesn’t know what to expect next. This loss of control soon becomes a catalyst with a certain power as the glitch passes a tipping point. After its tipping point, the glitch is either understood as a failure, or as a development that forces new knowledge onto the user about their presumptions of the technology, or the technologies actual functioning. In case of the latter, the glitch can force the user to reconsider their habitual use of the technology.
After this experience of rupture, the glitch thus moves beyond its sublime momentum and vanishes into a realm of new conditions; it becomes a new mode - either technologically or aesthetically -, while its previous uncanny encounter is now an ephemeral, personal experience of a machine.
︎ From the INC Website
The Glitch Moment/um is the title of a small booklet I published in 2011. In the publication, I describe the moment of encountering a glitch as twofold:
First there is the moment the glitch happens, which is often experienced as an uncanny break of an expected technological flow or threatening loss of control. In this moment, the user or spectator doesn’t know what to expect next. This loss of control soon becomes a catalyst with a certain power as the glitch passes a tipping point. After its tipping point, the glitch is either understood as a failure, or as a development that forces new knowledge onto the user about their presumptions of the technology, or the technologies actual functioning. In case of the latter, the glitch can force the user to reconsider their habitual use of the technology.
After this experience of rupture, the glitch thus moves beyond its sublime momentum and vanishes into a realm of new conditions; it becomes a new mode - either technologically or aesthetically -, while its previous uncanny encounter is now an ephemeral, personal experience of a machine.
︎ From the INC Website
“Glitch culture organizes itself around the investigation and aestheticization of breaks in the conventional flow of information, or meaning within (digital) communication systems.
In this book, Rosa Menkman brings in early information theorists not usually encountered in glitch’s theoretical foundations to refine a signal and informational vocabulary appropriate to glitch’s technological moment/ums and orientations.”
