Menkman provides a listed manifesto in which she explores ‘glitch’ as an standard for art, technology and innovation as it pertains to media studies. I bolded certain words and phrases in the original text of the “Manifesto” to emphasize my analysis that follows. My initial response to Menkman’s “ Glitch Studies Manifesto” pertains to its initial point:
The dominant, continuing search for a noiseless channel has been – and will always be – no more than a regrettable, ill-fated dogma.
Acknowledge that although the constant search for complete transparency brings newer, ‘better’ media, every one of these improved techniques will always possess their own inherent fingerprints of imperfection.
In the above selection, Menkman states that the “search for a noiseless channel has been – and will always be – no more than a regrettable, ill-fated dogma” (11). She goes on to elaborate what is meant by a “noiseless channel” is “complete transparency [that] brings newer, ‘better’ media”. ‘Noise’ in Menkman’s usage seems to imply ‘glitch’. Thus, ‘noiseless-ness’ and ‘glitch-less-ness’ are both forms of perfect transparency and clarity in our creation, transmittance and consumption of media. Yet, it is self-evident that perfection cannot exist in any artifacts and technology, including and especially in digital media, as they carry “fingerprints of imperfection” from having been created by human beings with limited reason.
The algorithms by which we are introduced to data and that are responsible for regulating the data which we release into the cyberspace is just unclear and opaque to us as the users of networked digital media technology. Indeed, we see this illustrated in Carole Cadwalladr’s "Google, democracy and the truth about internet search,” The Guardian. Transparency in our media (i.e. clarity in how we come by and give out data) is an unattainable aspiration. There will always be those who will exploit ‘glitches’ or who will impede our access to algorithms where “fingerprints of imperfection” can be detected. Transparency in digital media, much like in our public institutions, are ideals to which we may reach for the sake of progress, but which we may never grasp.
Continuing with Menkman’s concept of ‘noise’, I sense that there are parallels with the existentialist concept of ‘chatter’, which is the influence of public opinion on the identity formation of the human subject. At least per the understanding I have gotten from my incredibly limited exposure to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger, ‘chatter’ is the bane of the authentic will of the individual. One is meant to overcome ‘chatter’ to find their authentic self and to clarify their will. This is especially pertinent when it comes to the role media plays in the formation of opinion in the public sphere. Dominant discourses and imagery in our news and entertainment media are in large part akin to ‘chatter’ or ‘noise’ which drowns out the representation and visibility of more marginalized voices. How are voices or bodies which are rarely conveyed in all their complexity to be heard or seen? How is the marginalized subject to develop authentic individual identity and authentically identify with others amidst the ‘noise’ and ‘glitches’ in the representation of our individual and shared identities? And how are we to accept that ‘glitches’ are genuine rather than built into or maintained in our media technologies in complement with the politics of representation in a given social context?
The values of authenticity, resistance, liminality and agency take greater form the “Glitch Manifesto” credo in the following point:
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Dispute the operating templates of creative practice. Fight genres, interfaces and expectations!
Refuse to stay locked into one medium or between contradictions like real vs. virtual, obsolete vs. up-to-date, open vs. proprietary or digital vs. analog. Surf the vortex of technology, the in-between, the art of artifacts!
Words like ‘dispute’ and ‘fight’ call to mind struggles and resistance. How do the Islamic concepts of al-jihad al-akbar and al-jihad al-asghar tie into these forms of resistance? Can a al-jihad al-akbar, or ‘the greater struggle with the self’ as I understand it, be represented more in our media rather than solely instances in which violent extremists or non-state actors engage in the more widely covered al-jihad al-asghar, or the ‘lesser struggle to change others’? This also extends to the concept of amr bil ma’ruf wa nahy al-munkar, or ‘command the good and forbid the evil’, which is often reduced to the representation of more intolerant Hezbollahi or Salafi Muslims holding others accountable to Islamic fundamentalist norms rather than to represent a more personal spiritual practice of looking for the encouraging the good deeds and forgiving character defects in both the self and in others. And for the sake of my own research, would anyone happen to know any social and media theorists who explore any of these Islamic terms in relation to the politics of representation of Islam/Muslim folx in global or transnational media? If so, could you please reply with some references? Thanks ;)
As for the phrase “Surf the vortex of technology, the in-between, the art of artifacts!”, the vortex of technology may allude to the spiral theory of how public opinion forms in the public sphere. Media plays a deeply personal role in effecting who a given constructed "we" think we are and how "we" perceive a constructed "other" relative "us". Beyond the institutions of family and community, it is through media institutions we learn about our greater society and how we relate to it. Thus, the formation of collectively-held public opinions and discourses are ever more anarchic in the age of information and multimedia technologies, as the means of conveying such information and the amount of information we reveal about ourselves slips evermore into the hands of those who would work against our authentic will. Cadwalladr’s statement on how Cambridge Analytica has abused its access to Facebook user data in promoting the Trump campaign captures this truth of our times: “They understand your emotional responses and how to trigger them. They know your likes, dislikes, where you live, what you eat, what makes you laugh, what makes you cry.” Thus, overcoming polarized and binary forms of public opinion is critical in deconstructing narratives that wish to undermine human agency in the representation of marginalized bodies and voices. Exploring the 'liminal' or 'in-between' is where we can begin to interrupt the flow of grand narratives that shape our public opinion. This interruption becomes an act of resistance that can be explained further through glitch:
3. Get away from the established action scripts and join the avant-garde of the unknown. Become a nomad of noise artifacts!
The static, linear notion of information-transmission can be interrupted on three occasions: during encoding-decoding (compression), feedback or when a glitch (an unexpected break within the flow of technology) occurs.
Interrupting the flow of technology opens up room to question its inner workings. For as long media technology performs its essential functions, we do not detect a need to inquire about its inner workings. It is moments of unexpected pauses that our minds will wonder why there is a break in the flow and what mechanisms are at play to construct our view of what is "real" and what is "virtual". As all images and sound are conveyed through data, it is when data has been processed through algorithms that we can open our minds to the interpretation of that data; this means there is no simple getting of information from point A to point B, from computer A to computer B or from site A to site B. The placement of an ad link on a website or the prediction of search terms are manipulations of data via algorithms, much like what Cadwalladr experienced in her google searches:
“What these rightwing news sites have done, [Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina] explains, is what most commercial websites try to do. They try to find the tricks that will move them up Google’s PageRank system. They try and “game” the algorithm. And what his map shows is how well they’re doing that. That’s what my searches are showing too. That the right has colonised the digital space around these subjects – Muslims, women, Jews, the Holocaust, black people – far more effectively than the liberal left."
According to Cadwalladr, companies like Google and Facebook brush these issues off as beyond their control because they fail to acknowledge there is a glitch that can be exploited. But Facebook obviously bears responsibility in selling user data it collects and Google bears responsibility as being a medium through which "fake news" is transmitted to its consumers. But the only way we would have been able as average users and consumers of these services to have known this is to have known the inner workings of these algorithms and data-mining, which tech companies like Google and Facebook go to great lengths to keep out of the hands and heads of the public. The responsibility to educating us as consumers and user thus falls on our own hands as our state institutions have not managed to enforce measures to protect users and consumers of digital media services. Perhaps it is in this light that noise artifacts and glitch art can empower us in the humanities and social sciences: using creative digital media outlets to both create works of art while simultaneously gaining a better understanding of digital media technology for purposes of protecting ourselves, our communities, our public sphere and our 'data bodies'.
Works Cited:
Cadwalladr, Carole (04 Dec 2016) "Google, democracy and the truth about internet search,” The Guardian.
Menkman, Rosa (2011) “Glitch Studies Manifesto,” Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. Pp. 11.
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