Glitch Art, Compression Artefacts, and Digital Materiality

Carleigh Morgan

CALCULATED ERROR: GLITCH ART, COMPRESSION ARTEFACTS, AND DIGITAL MATERIALITY

Abstract

This paper proposes a reconsideration of the aesthetic category of ‘glitch’ and advocates for a more careful theorisation around indexing — in the sense of both locating and naming — errors of a digital kind. Glitches are not as random as they seem: they are ordered and shaped by computational hardware and software, which impose a mathematical rubric on how glitches visually manifest and set ontological and technological constrains on glitch that limit how digital errors can and cannot be made to appear. Most crucially, this paper thinks about how one particular type of glitch — a compression artefact called a macroblock — can often appear as random, erratic, or unpredictable but is, in fact, materially constrained and visually conditioned according to the principles of computing and computer design. At its core, compression aesthetics can shed light on the operations of algorithms, the structures of digital technologies, and the priorities and patterns which occur as a function of algorithmic manipulation. The randomness, unpredictability, or messiness which glitch studies invokes around the glitch is in danger of overlooking the ways that the material architectures and algorithmic protocols structure the digital glitch by organising, constraining, and given form to its appearance.

APRJA Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019 ISSN 2245-7755

CC license: ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’. Carleigh Morgan: CALCULATED ERROR

Bodies and machines are defned marked by fuctuating glitch effects. by function: as long as they operate All of these works owe at least one of correctly, they remain imperceptible. their particular stylistic effects to the process — Maurice Merleau-Ponty, known as compression hacking. This paper Phenomenology of Perception (239). examines how compression hacking works as process of algorithmic manipulation and In 2005, Takeshi Murata released a short considers what the artistic practice of com- flm called Monster Movie. This flm show- pression hacking exposes about the com- cased a swamp creature emerging from position of digital images. The key argument the muck that was noteworthy for its unique is twofold: frst, that the particular effects visual effects: blocks of mutating pixels that produced by compression hacking are deter- seemed to burst through the monster’s body, mined by the computational processes and deconstructing its image into a scattered material properties of digital media; second, and murky pixel array. Other glitch art, like that the algorithmic functions that are used David O’Reilly’s Compression Reels and the in compression hacking establish the condi- net 2.0 aesthetics of cyberpunk art collective tions by which compression artefacts can PaperRad, were sparked by similar inter- appear, but that sometimes these compres- ests in exposing the underlying algorithmic sion artefacts remain invisible. Nevertheless, protocols and structuring interfaces of digital the production of compression artefacts as media. In the 2000s, glitch style migrated a result of compression hacking depends from its origins on niche punk-art message not only on certain level of algorithmic boards and underground websites to become functionality, but also on the matter of digital incorporated into commercial music videos technologies: compression artefacts, like all for both Kanye West and electro-pop group glitch effects, owe their various materialisa- Chairlift. Directed by Ray Tintori, Chairlift’s tions to technologies which are not entirely music video for Evident Utensil used glitch dysfunctional. In other words, malfunction is effects to create a visual aesthetic marked borne out of function: a digital error depends by an array of mutating colour blocks that on the enduring functionality of the systems fused the band with their surrounding envi- which give rise it, to make such an error leg- ronment and seemed to rupture the diving ible as out-of-the-ordinary. One corollary to line between the environment staged in the this argument is that the presence of what video — its content — and the colours on appears to be a glitch in a digital image does the surface of the screen — its form. Kanye not always indicate the presence of an un- West’s Welcome to Heartbreak achieved a derlying technological error — a claim which more fastidiously controlled, choreographed unsettles the notion of technological trouble- style of glitch art that combined chromakey shooting and the heuristics underpinning a and green screen techniques to unsettle ‘diagnostics’ of technological failure. the grammars of commercial video edit- To these ends, this paper proposes a ing. Starring West and featured singer Kid reconsideration of the aesthetic category Cudi, the music video depicted the rappers of ‘glitch’ and advocates for a more care- ‘melting’ into each one another, alternating ful theorisation around indexing — in the recognisable fragments of their faces with sense of both locating and naming — errors sequences of digital skids and bleeds that of a digital kind. Most crucially, this paper fractured the representational image and thinks about how glitches — which often transformed it into an unstable landscape appear as random, erratic, or unpredictable

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— are materially constrained and visually descriptor which seems to describe the quali- conditioned according to the principles of ties of compression artefacts themselves computing and computer design. Glitches — e.g. ‘moshing’ conjuring a pixel-based are not as random as they seem; in fact, they modularity and squishiness — it does not are ordered and shaped by computational foreground the technological dimension of hardware and software, which impose a this artistic process as clearly as the term mathematical rubric on how glitches visually compression hacking does. ‘Datamoshing’ manifest and set ontological and technologi- elides the role that the artist plays in refor- cal constrains on glitch that limit how digital mulating the video fles to produce visual errors can and cannot be made to appear. compression artefacts, and in so doing intro- This paper will emphasise compression duces confounding variables into the discus- hacking for a few reasons. The frst reason sion that this paper does not have the scope is to draw attention to the human labour and to address. Thinking about how to achieve the activity of ‘hacking’ which generates com- compression artefacts as a product of pression artefacts. It also reinforces that this compression hacking means that less tech- artistic practice is achieving by playing with nologically invasive methods for achieving the computational logics of compression — its stylistic effects — so datamoshing done compression hacking requires a modicum of by applying a photo or video flter through computational literacy and is an activity un- the implementation flters via programs dertaken by someone who understands how like Photoshop — can be set to one side. to manipulate the information encoded in im- Although any fle format can be compression age or video fles. With an emphasis on the hacked, this paper will focus on digital video/ ‘hacking’ of compression hacking, it is clear moving images for two reasons: because this that this paper will not address compression is the format which has mostly received the artefacts or glitches as spontaneously oc- attention of compression hackers. curring: the epistemic frameworks used to diagnose a digital error in the instance of a glitch’s spontaneous occurrence would act On compression algorithms as a confounding factor. Simply put, looking at the glitch generally, rather than at glitch art specifcally, one is forced to contend with The law of information processing upholds other variables pertaining to the origin of a that the “fewer states one needs to process glitch. To think of glitch as a homogenous a message, the faster and more effcient the aesthetic form rather than glitch art as a spe- system is” (Kane 220). Data compression cifc technological practice — or to begin with follows this law by simplifying how data is compression artefacts rather than compres- stored. The purpose of data compression sion hacking — means grappling with the is typically to optimise storage space or notion that the glitch appears despite there increase data transmission rates, and it is being no known intervention from an outside often motivated by a desire to save both time agent (e.g. artist, hacker, programmer) who and money. Compression algorithms record can testify to a glitch’s cause or represent a only the measurable changes in the image reason for its occurrence. data. As a result, only areas of a moving There is another terminological clarif- image which describe differential motion or cation to make here. Although the term ‘da- changing luminance values are captured tamoshing’ operates as an onomatopoetical by the compression algorithms (Arcangel).

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According to this principle, images with fewer In order to dramatically reduce the amount substantial changes from frame to frame are of data that needs to be stored, what is easier to encode. “The whole point of digital captured in a compressed video fle is only image compression,” Cory Arcangel writes the difference between the initial, or i-frame “is to be able to reconstruct an image without and the subsequent images, the p-frame, having to send all the data.” Lossless com- (sometimes called the delta Δ frames for pression, as the name might suggest, does this reason). These later frames contain the not lose any information from the original image’s transform instructions of the initial source during any point of the compression or keyframe. The illusion of object motion in (encoding) or decompression (decoding) pro- an image or the appearance that the image cess. In his short treatise “On Compression,” itself is moving is determined by relationship Arcangel develops a very clear analogy that between the p frames and the i-frames. If this captures this method of data-optimization in relationship is thought of as the difference in non-technical terms: motion interpellated over time, “subsequent frames could be described as a catalogue of Let’s say we wanted to send this: pure differentiality” (Levin). In addition to key- ‘aaaaaaaaaba’ and we were going frames and predictive frames, there are also to send it over the phone by voice. b-frames: these are similar to p-frames but As opposed to having to send all a b-frame references the frame both before the information by reading out each and after it. Modifying b-frames leads to more letter one at a time, we could just tell unpredictable results than modifying only the someone ‘9a’s, one b, and one a’ keyframes and predictive frames (Arcangel). and they would know we meant ‘a a In short, compression algorithms control the a a a a a a a b a’ and we have saved behaviour of several kinds of frames. When ourselves a bit of breath. In computer combined, these frames act as a catalogue language it means we have stored all of movement, and therefore are functions of the information using less space. time — they measure the differences in image data from frame to frame. Digital video fles are composed of Compression hacking creates a new sequences of different types of frames: merging reference between the elements of ‘i-frames’ or initial frames — commonly an original image frame and the successive called keyframes — “are full representations frame. When compression hacking does of a single frame of a video” (Arcangel). In yield visible compression artefacts, they essence, a keyframe is simply a still image occur as a direct result of ‘playing around’ containing all the colour and luminance data with the relationships between the initial of a particular frame and are typically used frames and the predictive frame to create as reference points by animators. In digital digital images characterised by breaks, folds, animation as in hand-drawn animation, key- ruptures, skids, mutations, and pixelated frames are important for determining where blots. “Macro-blocking, pixelating, checker- and when an animation sequence starts boarding, quilting and mosaicking” (Levin) or stops. Predictive, or ‘p-frames,’ on the are kinds of compression artefacts. These other hand, are reference fles that inform descriptors capture how these artefacts ap- the video player of changes to the image’s pear as geometric forms; their behaviours compositional arrangement that have oc- and appearances are visibly linked to or- curred since the previous frame (Arcangel). ganisation of a computational grid arranged

207 APRJA Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019 by Cartesian coordinates, a point that will and decoding process of compression, as important to remember. a sign of the image’s technological corrup- Compression artefacts are made vis- tion. However, simply identifying that there ible through the use of lossy compression are compression artefacts within an image algorithms, whereby some of the information is not suffcient evidence for diagnosing the about an image is ‘lost’, although it is more presence of a technological error within the accurate to classify the lost information as compression algorithm itself. The algorithmic unnecessary, surplus, or disposable. Lossy behaviour of the compression algorithm and compression can occur for a variety of rea- the creation of compression artefacts are, sons, but it is not bad — in fact, in instances necessarily, behaviourally linked—but their of low bandwidth or limited storage space, behaviour is not identical. In other words, im- lossy compression is desirable. Lossy com- ages that appear ‘glitched’ are not always pro- pression removes or replaces the initial key- duced by malfunctioning code. Particularly in frames and/or predictive frames in a video the case of compression artefacts using lossy fle. It can also cause the “playback image compression, ‘corruption’ within an image and motion-vector data to distort the result- is a matter of artistic perspective. The next ing moving image with unpredictable results” section will briefy examine how compression (Goriunova and Shulgin 91), but it is worth artefacts ft into longer theorisations about noting that the information lost during the the visualisation of technological failure in compression process is not always detected modern and postmodern culture. by the human eye. Often the loss of information is of no great consequence, but the fact that data is lost during lossy compression Locating the glitch means that it is limited in its application: lossy compression techniques applied to text documents, or “any application where all the As a discipline, glitch studies are a relatively information must remain intact” (Arcangel) new area of academic research that has nev- would render the text fle unreadable and ertheless furnished a prodigious amount of unable to be restored to its original condition. scholarship in recent years. Despite the high Despite the economic, temporal, and volume of cross-disciplinary contributions logistical advantages offered by lossy com- to glitch studies — from flmmakers, aca- pression, images or data which undergo demics, programmers, and para-academic lossy compression are frequently thought of practitioners — very little academic work has as a downgraded copy of the original image directed its focus towards the artistic practice or data fle (Brown and Kutty 168). These of compression hacking. Perhaps one of the downgraded versions of an image or data set diffculties in charting work on compression are optimised for easy storage and retrieval hacking is due to the fact that glitch studies rather than for visual fdelity or clarity. But the is particularly prone to semantic inconsisten- central role of visuality in contemporary digi- cies, especially because the scholarship on tal culture means that the aesthetic of lossy glitch is often positioned as a history of the compression is often read as one typifed by present. Keeping pace with the rapid aes- visual blemish or corruption on the surface thetic transformations ushered in by digital of the image. These blemishes are read as media may pose problems for glitch schol- evidence of a technological error which oc- ars, whose subject of study may fuctuate curred at some point during the encoding as rapidly as the internet and the aesthetic

208 Carleigh Morgan: CALCULATED ERROR formations it produces. For example, some explosions may have been one of the few digital media scholars refer to compression ways that workers were given a glimpse hacking by another name — ‘datamosh- into the structural and operational logic of ing’[1] — or simply subsume compression the machines in their midst. By violently artefacts into larger historical and cultural exploding, industrial machines dramatically considerations of the ‘glitch’ as a general exposed their interlocking mechanisms — aesthetic category. the machinic accident might be understood a While compression hacking can be spectacle of the machine’s operational logic. situated within the domain of glitch as an Error, malfunction, breakdown — these states artistic practice, it also fts into a longer cul- presuppose a stability, a rationality, and order tural and historical practice of theorising the from which the accident can erupt. From this technological accident. The spectre of error teleological perspective, the accident acts — alien ‘glitches’ in a system — haunts this as a necropsy to dissect the malfunctioning long era of the technological, invading every- machine — one need only be reminded of thing from the industrial advances in steam ‘exploded-view-diagrams’ today to consider locomotion to computer science to drone how the accident testifes not only to the warfare. Like the character Wintermute in structure and teleology of a machine, but William Gibson’s Neuromancer, glitches are also how “every technology carries its own frequently conceptualised as ghostly forces, negativity, which is invented at the same time malfunctions that interrupt the normal opera- as technical progress” (Virilo 89). tions of technological systems by seemingly The concern over an unpredictable or emerging “out of nothing and from nowhere,” sinister machinic vital force persists today. As giving viewers “a feeting glimpse of an visual cultural theorist Carolyn L Kane writes: alien intelligence at work” (Vanhanen 46). “computers and algorithmic systems are pro- This theory traces its roots to anxieties that gressively given authority over human action attenuated the industrial and technological and experience […] yet we have a dwindling shifts demarcating the late Victorian from the capacity to recognize [sic] this” (219). Viewed Early modern period, which were populated from afar, she hypothesises that ‘the entire by stories of the technological gothic: “ghosts history of modern art could be construed as in the machine” depicted the “threat to the a glitch and compression of Enlightenment humans subject posed by an autonomous, epistemology” (Kane 219). In “Datamoshing uncontrollable technology” (Rutsky 125). as Syntactic Form,” Thomas Levin articu- Indeed, before ‘glitches’ came to be lates a theory of compression hacking that known as such, the ubiquity of the unnamed ties it to anxieties produced by “the miscom- accident was a frequent source of terror for munication between sender and receiver”. people of the industrial age who struggled He cites this transcoding error as distinctively to come to grips with the provenance and cybernetic, operating historically as an aes- cause of technological catastrophe. Many in- thetic that “exposes societal paranoia by dustrial technologies did not have monitoring illustrating dependence on the digital and systems, failsafe options, or the emergency fear of system failure [and] with the advent stops. As such, industrial machines were of video sharing sites like YouTube […] the constantly threatening to malfunction — one glitch aesthetic has evolved into a pop culture way of treating the factory explosion is not just artefact” (Levin). Casey Boyle advocates for to read it for its catastrophic effects, but also an art theoretical approach to glitch that em- to see in it a perverse rationality. Machinic braces it as a generative practice — and not

209 APRJA Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019 merely as a materialisation of technological computation, which lies under, over failure — because glitches can “render ap- and in the interstices between the parent that which is transparent by design” modular elements if an increasingly (12). Greg Hainge argues that the glitch computational society. (57) foregrounds “how technology always relies on the successful inclusion or integration of failure into its systems” (27). Perspectives like those of Hainge valorise technological Calculated error failure as necessary to technological function Rather than think of this breakdown in the and recuperate the glitch from its negative as- sense of dysfunction, it can be understood in sociations. One ramifcation of Hainge’s view the sense of take apart. Although it may seem is that the line between something which is like metaphorical hair-splicing, reconsidering ‘noise’ and something which is ‘signal’ is not what is meant by such a breakdown may be an expression of a technological boundary at a crucial avenue for exploration the aesthetic all. Instead, ‘glitch’ is a phenomenon which features of the digital glitch, which reveals can call into question the very stability and itself at the fault-line between breakdown determinability of the distinction between as an entropic activity and break-down as a signal and noise. structuring principle. Within this larger framework of glitch Consider one particular type of com- theorised as an emergent unpredictability in pression artefact: the macroblock, as shown machine function, it is not surprising to see in the image above. Macroblocking visually compression hacking described as a practice destabilises the representational legibility of which brings to the surface of the image the a digital image while simultaneously rear- operational failures of digital systems. But ranging it into ordered blocks. There are compression hacking is not the result of a small sections where the outline of an object technological accident. To consider com- appears, only to be abruptly cut off by large pression artefacts the result of accident, or to blocks of colour. Macroblocking can unsettle think of the compression artefact as ‘glitched’ the ability of a spectator to apprehend an is to both deny the artistic labour which image as representationally legible, even produces compression hacked images and when traces of recognisable objects remain to misunderstand the relationship between within the image. Macroblocking creates visual and technological malfunction. the impression of a carefully controlled Still, it is possible to situate compres- digital schizophrenia in a moving image: the sion hacking in what David M. Berry calls the shifting location, luminance, and colour of ‘new aesthetic’ (NA) a form of “‘breakdown’ macroblocks combine to create an impres- art linked to the conspicuousness of digital sion of movement that seems to originate technologies” (56). Berry writes: in the screen’s pixels. These pixels seem to scatter, breakthrough, or penetrate the digital We might conclude that the NA is the materiality of the screen, moving with regi- cultural eruption of the grammatization mental precision. Jeff Donaldson describes [sic] of software logics into everyday these kinds of artefacts as “a break from an life. The NA can be seen as surfacing algorithmic fow [whose] unanticipated ap- computational patterns, and in doing pearance is simultaneously frustrating and so articulates and represents the mesmerizing”. unseen and little-understood logic of

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Figure 1: GlitchTVbot (2019). _Image_[Twitter]/ Available at: https://twitter.com/GlitchTVBot/sta- tus/1141287271922110464 (Accessed 03 June 2019).

But a macroblock does not actually Using a lossless compression algorithm consist of migrating pixels. A macroblock, yields no loss of data; whether one reports occasionally called a ‘blocking artefacts,’ is ‘aaaaaaaaaba’ or ‘9a’s, one b, and one a’, a distortion in a compressed image that ap- the information remains unchanged. But if pears as a collection of pixel blocks. It can the example above used lossy compres- occur for a variety of reasons, but what is sion, ‘aaaaaaaaaba’ would be simplifed to most important about macroblocking is that it ‘roughly 10 a’s’. A similar process, called relies on the mathematical principles of com- quantisation, occurs to create macroblocks. pression in image processing and does not Instead of capturing all of the detail in a feature the motion of pixels themselves. Let’s particular region of an image using a detailed return to Arcangel’s vernacular description of range of values, the compression algorithm compression for a moment: encodes only a single value for a particular region. If an image undergoes a great deal Let’s say we wanted to send this: of lossy compression, the amount of informa- ‘aaaaaaaaaba’ and we were going tion that is reduced during the compression to send it over the phone by voice. process may be signifcant; in the case of As opposed to having to send all macroblocking, the information the remains the information by reading out each after lossy compression may only pertain to letter one at a time, we could just tell the average colour of a collection of pixel someone ‘9a’s, one b, and one a’ blocks, thereby rendering an area that was and they would know we meant ‘a a formerly populated by multiple colours and a a a a a a a b a’ and we have saved luminance values into a block of a single ourselves a bit of breath. In computer colour. language it means we have stored all the information using less space.

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Donaldson’s description of the logic of the usage of ‘pixel’ in the colloquial sense, computational failure is of particular signif- typically used to suggest that they are the cance in understanding how the architecture atomic components of a digital image which of digital devices shape the images which can be decomposed and rearranged, pixels they manifest. His remarks are interesting to are not building blocks. Furthermore, a single reproduce here for their emphasis on the pixel pixel is not mobile — despite the descriptions as a format which is defned by a specifc set of swirling, mutating, or bleeding pixels used of algorithmic architectures and confned by to characterise the glitch aesthetic, pixels the material makeup and organisation of the remain fxed, and they are not visible to the computer display: unaided human eye. In fact, a pixel is a unit of data that is “fundamentally ambivalent It is a true type of machine art and to vision” (Baraklianou 306) tethered to its a crude form of artifcial intelligence array, and intimately connected with it sur- inasmuch that once an algorithm is let rounding pixels. The pixel is arranged with go to run free, due to the architecture others like it into a pixel array — always a of digital systems, a break from routine geometric formation — and the visual quali- creates an ordering of its own. The ties of this array depend on the behaviours pixel grid of the computer display of pixels which constitute it and surround it; provides the framework and serves as colour and luminance are not determined by the canvas for this manifested algo- the value of a single pixel but are “assigned rithmic hiccup. It’s as if the computer is at a later stage” and depend strongly on freed from its normal task and instead the relationships between pixel elements displays what it [sic] wants, the (Baraklianou 306). Whereas the pixel ele- architecture of electronics giving ment is anchored to the architecture of the shape to sudden random image data. screen and the Cartesian arrangement of (Donaldson) the pixel grid, the appearance of a pixel is relational function. In other words, while the Following Donaldson, let’s explore how pixel is geographically fxed to an (x,y) posi- macroblocks owe their particular appearance tion on the screen, its “function is based on to the design and arrangement of the pixel relational value sets assigned through the grid. Pixel, which comes from a contraction matrix of the corresponding elements around of the words picture (pic, pix) and “either it. This enables designation and manipulation element or cell […] is basically the smallest of point-by-point values in the image, which element of a discrete and non-continuous renders the image mutable” (Baraklianou dataset […] arranged via an address on a grid 307). Hence, macroblocking appears as the location (x,y)” (Baraklianou 305). A pixel is moveable, mutating arrangement of pixels, the matter of which digital images are formed but the material architectures of the pixel grid and the medium through which an image and logics of the compression algorithm act takes shape. A single pixel’s appearance is as boundaries on this visual chaos and keep determined mathematically: electrical signals the pixels fxed in place. The movement of are converted into a “two-dimensional array pixel blocks from one location on the (x.y) of information. A pixel is a register of data plane to another is simply a visual illusion, that, in combination with other pixels in an one which appears due to the way that mac- array […] is a sample encoded in a long set roblocking allows a spectator to observe the of binary codes” (Baraklianou 306). Despite geometries of the pixel grid as an emergent

212 Carleigh Morgan: CALCULATED ERROR property of the compressed image. metaphorically and matter-of-factly, the artists At its core, compression hacking can describe the project as an attempt to “make shed light on the operations of algorithms, hidden the data structure” of digital technolo- the structures of digital technologies, and the gies visible: the original images and moving priorities and patterns which occur as a func- images shared across these peer-to-peer tion of algorithmic manipulation. “Machines,” networks are run through “a transformation writes Liam Young, “see the world through machine,” whose oblique name functions like coded sets of rules. Whether through a a black box, with its refusal to confde in the camera lens, sensor, or scanner, they search specifc technological process of translation for particular confgurations of data, sets that causes a shared fle “to dissolve into of predefned relationships, patterns, and pixels” (!Mediengruppe Bitnik). The language geometries” (125). The characteristics of used to describe Download Finished invokes macroblocking, and by extension other kinds images of technological systems that are im- of compression artefacts, can offer clues penetrable and unknowable except through about the way that computer architectures, the form of their spectacular malfunction. such as the pixel array, are structured. The In this way of thinking, the mystifying com- appearance of a compression artefact is mands and obfuscating structures that allow constrained by the logics of compression, computer technologies to work can only and by the geometries confning computer be visibly foregrounded through an error in hardware, such as the pixel array, to a par- these very commands, a breakdown in these ticular gridded orientation. So while it may very structures. seem like pixels are moving in regimental Glitch artist Rosa Menkman also be- blocks, this is an illusion that is shaped by the lieves that glitch art functions to reveal the material architectures of the pixel grid and obfuscated logics of computer processes. the way that the appearance of a pixel array She considers her practice a political one is a product that is relationally determined, because it interrupts the function of computer mathematically constrained, and materially systems by introducing malfunction into a fxed. “highly complex assemblage that is often hard to penetrate and sometimes even com- pletely closed off” (Menkman 12). Menkman’s Detecting glitch perspective on glitch art as a radical critique of technological determinism is echoed by critics like Hainge. On Hainge’s formulation, In the early 2000s, art collective glitching materialises the ‘noise’ that lies !Mediengruppe Bitnik released Download dormant or unseen within the operations of Finished - The Art of Filesharing. Described digital systems. Some media scholars view by the artists as “an online resource which glitch art as the latest instantiation of the “aes- transforms and re-publishes flms from thetic use of discarded and deleted data (i.e. P2P [peer-to-peer] networks and online ar- errors)” (Kane, “Compression Aesthetics”) or chives,” Download Finished is a part digital as a reaction against the impenetrability of performance, part post-structuralist critique computational systems. of the hidden technological protocols and New media scholars like Casey Boyle underlying architectures that give colour, also adopt this viewpoint. Boyle’s “Questions form and shape to digital signal and digital Concerning Glitch” explicitly expands on the noise (!Mediengruppe Bitnik). Speaking both work of Katherine Hayles and Bruno Latour

213 APRJA Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019 to argue that a responsible rhetorical practice question that has so far gone explicitly un- for glitch art would involve understanding “all asked: is macroblocking a glitch? In brief, no. mediation and any glitches as generative To label this compression artefact a ‘glitch’ is and not as errors to be corrected” (Boyle not a perception, but a judgement. That is, 12). In The Wretched of the Screen, Hito to always read compressed images — or Steyerl champions this feature of the glitch, visual indecipherability more generally — as too, calling them the bruises of images that a symptom of technological malfunction is to are “violated, ripped apart, subjected to inter- assign a creative intentionality to the com- rogation, and probing” (5). And as Donaldson pression algorithm, which is in fact indifferent writes: to the representational clarity of the images it produces. It also supposes that the visual The artist’s hand no longer dictates the layer of digital images mimics the behaviour outcome the way it does with con- of the algorithmic one. But the compres- ventional fne art. Instead, conditions sion algorithm has no stake in maintaining are created to bring forth something representational sensibility for its viewers. unpredictable, inasmuch as the set Compression hacking can give rise to “ran- parameters are capable of producing. dom image data” (Donaldson) but it can only use the data available to the compression Compression hacking aligns with these algorithm — and the data can only ever be considerations of the glitch. Compression preserved or lost, never rendered more de- hacking works to distorts the sleek, seam- tailed than its original source. Furthermore, less look of the digital image and to create any ‘chaos’ is bounded by the computational an aesthetic that “allows insight beyond limits of the compression algorithm and the the customary, omnipresent […] computer arrangement of the pixel grid. Finally, the aesthetics” and sheds light on “software’s appearance of macroblocking relies on the inner structure, whether it’s a mechanism of smooth operations of lossy compression; it data compression or HTML code” (Galloway cannot occur without the successfully com- 25). To be sure, compression hacking still pletion of the lossy encoding and decoding requires interpretation: it does not reveal process that is part of the overall process of the operations of the compression algorithm compression. The compression algorithm without some work behalf of the viewer and a must be functional in order to generate modicum of computational literacy. However, macroblocking effects; if macroblocking compression artefacts like macroblocking were to be considered an error, or as signal can draw attention to the computational of one, then its antecedent would not be the conventions by which digital images and lossy compression algorithm. After all, mac- rendered visible and by which “digital spaces roblocks are a product of lossy compression. are organized” (Galloway 25). The glitch If anything, the manifestation of macroblocks is a fssure that allows one to peer into the in an image would testify to the successful hidden operations and invisible structures of completion of lossy completion, not act as an digital technologies: “Whether its cause is in- indicator of its failure. tentional or accidental, a glitch famboyantly In The Interface Effect, Alexander undoes the communications platforms that Galloway writes that glitch art “recuperates we, as subjects of digital culture, both rely on and even relies on failure to succeed. It is and take for granted.” (Manon and Temkin) primarily a systemic relation” (25). Likewise, These theories gesture to an important Michel Serres, in his meditation on functional

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‘along sidedness’ writes, “Systems work images which mimic the appearance of tech- because they don’t work. Non functionality re- nical corruption while not relying on techni- mains essential for functionality” (in Galloway cal corruption at all to produce these visual 25). This perspective, however, does apply effects. to compression artefacts in the narrow case Compression artefacts like mac- being examined here. Although compression roblocks, then, are not materialisations of artefacts may give the appearance of being an underlying technological failure — as glitched, they still rely on the smooth opera- the argument goes within glitch studies — tions of the compression algorithm for their but they do visually simulate the effects of materialisation. Serre’s axiom needs to be a technical failure that has not occurred. modifed slightly in this case. As compression Compression artefacts indicate that there is hacking demonstrates, sometimes function- a subtle but signifcant difference between ality remains essential for the appearance of the visualisation of a technological error and non-functionality. Galloway’s observation can its aesthetic simulation. In a way, compres- be similarly adjusted for compression hack- sion artefacts are a pastiche of glitch style. ing, which can foreground how images that By thinking carefully about how compression appear to expose technological failure relies hacking affects the different strata of a digital on an underlying technological ‘success’ for image, one can see how the relationship their production. One can amend Galloway: between the algorithmic dimension and the compressed images show how glitch art imi- visual dimension of these images are inter- tates failure successfully rather than relying dependent but not behaviourally identical. An on failure to succeed. Ultimately, rather than error in the algorithmic layer does not always resigning compression artefacts to the do- manifest at the visual interface; conversely, main of glitch and its related nomenclatures, the appearance of a visual error is not a reli- glitch theorists should think seriously about able indicator of a technological malfunction. how compression artefacts might depend on In other words, the ‘glitch’ is in need of more precisely the opposite of technological failure careful theorisation: one should not confuse for their materialisation. an aesthetic of technological failure with an aetiology of technological malfunction or confate the visualisation of a technological Conclusion error with its aesthetic simulation. Finally, it is imperative to keep in mind how much the randomness, unpredictability, or messiness Digital media are optical and algorithmic which glitch studies invokes around the glitch in composition: however, the behaviour of is in danger of overlooking the ways that these two dimensions does not always cor- the material architectures and algorithmic respond. The non-representational character protocols structure the digital glitch by or- and unpredictable behaviour of compression ganising, constraining, and given form to its artefacts trouble a human tendency to col- appearance. lapse the optical and algorithmic dimensions of digital images at the level of the visual: specifcally, at the visual interface of digital media, where one can see what’s happening. Compression hacking produces compressed

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Acknowledgements Boyle, Casey. “The Rhetorical Question Concerning Glitch.” Computers and Composition, vol. 35, 2015, pp. This work was undertaken thanks in part 12–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comp- to the Trinity College’s External Research com.2015.01.003 (Accessed 14 March studentship; partially funded by a research 2019). grant from the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages; and completed due Berry, David M. Critical Theory and the to the enduring patience of the editors of Digital. Bloomsbury, 2015 this special collection. I have no conficts of interest to declare. Donaldson, Jeff. “Glossing over Thoughts on Glitch. A Poetry of Error.” Art Pulse. http://artpulsemagazine.com/glossing- over-thoughts-on-glitch-a-poetry-of-error Notes (Accessed 17 April 2019). Galloway, Alexander. The Interface Effect. Polity Press, 2012. [1] See Brown and Kutty; Schultz-Figueroa; Manon and Temkin; Levin; and Kane “Error.” Goriunova, Olga, and Alexei Shulgin. The term ‘datamoshing’ was coined by “Glitch.” Software Studies: A Lexicon, edited internet art collective PaperRad. by Matthew Fuller. MIT Press, 2008.

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