Iman Moradi – Glitch Aesthetics

Glitch Aesthetics
Iman Moradi
2.2. Visual Qualities
2.2.1. Visual history of glitches
Jackson Pollock is popularly quoted as saying:
"the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the
radio, in the old form of the Renaissance, each age finds its own technique."
History:
Cascone’s history of Glitch music and its historical contextualisation really
emphasises the role of the 1990’s techno-electronica culture as being a very
important influence in today’s glitch music genre. 13
I was adamant that the appreciation of visual glitches goes much back much
further than the 1980’s - 90’s and the ‘home computer’ retro aesthetic imagery
that is often associated with that time. In my early visual investigations, I was
pleasantly surprised to find a wealth of Glitch-alike imagery and the notion of the
accident in art spanning across decades of the use and misuse of media in artistic
practice. Initially, I would like to draw attention to the cubist movement. While
their works are not commonly thought of as ‘glitches’ per se, I believe that they
13
Cascone, K. (2000). "The Aesthetics of Failure: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer
Music." Computer Music Journal: 12-18.
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