Glitch

Studies of glitch aesthetics.

My newest body of work, Glitch, is a study of the conceptual and aesthetic qualities of what are considered to be undesirable consequences of the accidental, the unplanned and the unexpected.

The conceptual connotations of glitches are mostly negative: glitches interfere with, and upset, the smooth and predictable outcome of a well planned course of action. Glitches also require an effort to be made for their removal, and, since time is being equated with money, they are being perceived both as costly and annoying. The underlying malfunctions they reveal are the first, alarming signs of a system’s decay on its way to becoming obsolete (or dead).

In spite of our efforts to plan, organize and to generally keep things under control, ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry’... Life is so full of apparent randomness, that the best strategy for a sane survival seems to be the one embracing the unexpected in the hope that it can open up new directions and lead to new paths of action, and that in the end, things will ‘work out’. One way or another, they always do.

The ideas above are embodied into the structure of the images making up my Glitchseries: starting with well planned out compositions and color schemes they were run multiple times through noise and randomness introducing algorithms that managed to reveal unexpected suggestions for possible visual ideas and directions to follow.

As I was working on recapturing a sense of equilibrium, the work evolved in ways I couldn’t have planned for or predicted in advance, until a solution I have found satisfying was reached.

I put a lot of care into refining the aesthetic qualities of noise, turning what could be seen as an ugly and interfering blemish, into something I consider to be beautiful.

The images in this series are the result of a procedural balancing act performed on the edge separating order from chaos.