Glitch Art in Theory and Practice: Critical Failures and Post-Internet Art explores the concept of "glitch" alongside contemporary digital political economy to develop a general theory of critical media using glitch as a case study and model, focusing specifically on examples of digital art and aesthetics. While prior literature on glitch practice in visual arts has been divided between historical discussions and social-political analyses, this work provides a rigorous, contemporary theoretical foundation and framework.
By considering how machine labor as an extension of human action--as the mechanical amplification of human labor--becomes the digital, the machine does not augment but supplant. This removal of the human intermediary whose importance "Taylorism" (aka "scientific management," proposed in The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911) removes from production (assembly-line labor is instrumental, not intelligent) is part of a continuous trajectory from tasks organized around repetitive action (itself an organization that implies semiotic disassembly and standardization) into the automation of actions in digital automation where computers leave only a limited role for humans. Taylors approach elides the individuals expertise in performing their work, replacing it with decisions made by management--in the process eliminating their agency. This transformation renders human labor an appendage to the production process, necessary but incidental to the activity being performedactions that are prescribed and fully delimited in advance of the work being done. It transforms the labor into an unintelligent rendering of managerial agency as the thinking required in production is no longer the domain of labor. For Taylors analysis the human decision is the problem to be removed from the production process, just as human labor (in the form of wages) is the expense that must be minimized to maintain profitability.
You can see my movies at the Crossroads Festival at the San Francisco Cinematheque in Program #1: The Dark Rift screening Friday, April 1 at 7pm,
and Program #3: The Dogs of Space screening Saturday, April 2 at 1pm.
San Francisco Cinematheque
2961 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Tel: 415-863-7576
