Glitch art: critical practices of digital culture

Term “glitch” is used in English language for identifying any visible or audible malfunction of any device. Glitch art can be described in several ways: as a set of practices aimed at obtaining or modeling errors or aestheticization as digital or analog error. This article describes the modern critical theory and practice of glitch art. Mostly, conceptual description of glitch art are focused on the critical potential of this form of art. Glitch art is supposed to criticize digital capitalism or information society. M. Betancourt conducting a detailed analysis of glitch art as a specific form of criticism in his article «Critical Glitches and Glitch Art». Different understanding of how criticism is possible within the glitch art shows us that there are problems of a theoretical nature, which will constantly ask artists for new solutions. The relationship of society and the arts, in which the society seeks to neutralize or subdue the critical potential of art was described by Theodor Adorno in "Aesthetic Theory". Following by the issues actualized by Adorno, Michael Betancourt tries to offer a way out of the current state of glitch art in two complementary ways. Firstly, he offers artists pay more attention to the theory in general and to the theory of glitch art. Second, he points to the impossibility of immanent critique, embodied in the form of the «glitch». The critical sense is born only in the interpretation of works by audience. The objective of glitch art is to find ways of creating such art objects that are detecting political, economic and social relations behind the phenomenon of digital media, that focuses on the ideology. There are two different glitched strategies of deconstruction of video games made by two different artists. Untitled Game (Eng., «Nameless Game») - a project of the artistic group Jodi, 2001. The game is represented by 11 modifications of first-person shooter «Quake 1" (1996, ID Software). The modifications are consists in the fact that the player does not see the familiar interface and graphics, all he is offered - abstract images, sounds from the original game and some graphics artifacts. Another artist - Corey Archangel exploited cartridge schemes of the game «Super Mario Brothers», thus making a new version of this game that has been stripped of all the classic game elements - «Super Mario Clouds». Michael Betancourt proposes to distinguish between these two games according to their functionality. If «Untitled Game» dysfunctional, then «Supermario Brothers Clouds» - afunctional. The study of «glitches» makes a possibility of a critical look at how modern society is constructed and it is affected by digital technology. Key words: glitch art, digital culture, critical theory.

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