We are taught to chase perfection when writing code or creating a program. To write functions that act when things fail layered with more functions that can act when the first layer of defence fails. Over the years such practices have ensured that users never get a look into the other side of the wall even when things do not go as planned, practically endangering the glitch. I never gave that a second thought until I read Rosa Menkman’s Glitch Studies Manifesto that revealed an upside to a glitch in a program that I would not have thought of before. Describing noise as a “disturbance, break or addition within the signal of useful data” highlighted how it’s only thought of as a useless disturbance that we need to get rid of. Ignoring it’s potential in revealing hidden structures and challenge the norms entrusted upon us in modern technology. Using the glitch as a critique of this move away from noise which created a consumerist culture where we constantly crave newer devices that are more deprived of noise than the ones that came before them.

While I do still understand the desire for noiseless devices, this process of thinking did help me appreciate the noise more. And with the rise in demand for older digital camera and different vintage devices I see on social media now, I’d say there is an overall shift towards the noise in an attempt to reclaim the technological sphere. Artists taking the concept of the glitch and constructing it into their work is another form of reclamation of control over not just technology but also economic and political hierarchies. Taking a glitch and encoding it into a work can be seen as creating structure out of an unstructured phenomenon where you create “a new protocol after shattering an earlier one”. However, the discussion of how this is not the case for the viewer that still view the glitch art as an unexpected disturbance highlights how the world is all about perception, where the creator of the work will now see structure the viewer will still experience the essence of the glitch. Similarly every interaction with technology, whether it’s an orderly interaction or one muddled with noise, is shaped by the perception of the viewer who decides whether this is what a perfect program is.