Le Folklore du Web #8: Rosa Menkman

Dribbling pixels, altered images: glitch art is trendy. « Glitch » designates an electronic failure and by extension , all type of computing dysfunctions. Born into the web's underground in 2005, the genre has become popular thanks to the rap superstar Kanye West and his video clip Welcome to Heartbreak in 2009. This music video clip is based on torn images to illustrate the end of a declining love. This aestheticization of these errors of information technologies has now been infecting advertising, design and cinema (Cloverfield).

Media merely see glitch as a nice graphic effect. Nevertheless, « glitch art » is an alternative scene not that interested in the final result as in the whole process. « Glitch is the fabulous experience of a disturbing break that diverts the ordinary form and position of an object » witnesses Rosa Menckman, author of The Glitch Museum and co-organizer of the GLI.TC/H festival. The Dutch artist creates hypnotic images using formats, video compression, feedback and other forms of « noise ». She is part of this increasing group of artists that take an interest in low definition aesthetics, in poor images, in obsolescent media, in dirty style. According to Menckman, glitch cannot be summed up in one unique technique : it is a political act of freedom. An actof resistance to control, to this ideology of order and progress conveyed by digital media, to the myth of perfect transmission. « Discover catharsis in disintegration, in breakdowns and cracks, manipulate, fold and shatter the media until it becomes something new. »