Artists have long been fascinated by moments in which technology breaks down–perhaps none more so than JODI, an artist duo made up of Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans. In a post on the Rhizome lists from 1999, in which he discusses JODI's software-based artwork OSS (2000), Alex Galloway argues that "Focusing specifically on those moments where computers break down (the crash, the bug, the glitch), JODI discovers a new, autonomous aesthetic." The aesthetic was certainly not entirely new even then, but JODI's early work is a particularly strong exploration of the principles of glitch art, before the term came into common usage.
It was some years later, in 2010, when the idea of “glitch art” began to circulate with greater intentionally.
Rosa Menkman, The Collapse of PAL, 2010.
Rosa Menkman, a theorist and visual artist, was a key advocate for this new digital art practice. In her Glitch Studies Manifesto, she reflects on how computers, devices hard-coded in logic and predictable functions, are the perfect playground for pushing the boundaries of artistic expression:
As a result, the spectator is forced to acknowledge that the use of the computer is based on a genealogy of conventions, while in reality the computer is a machine that can be bend or used in many different ways. With the creation of breaks within politics and social and economical conventions, the audience may become aware of the preprogrammed patterns. Now, a distributed awareness of a new interaction gestalt can take form.
The ideas at play in glitch art have had many lives, and one of the most significant is the use of the word by Legacy Russell to describe “glitch feminism.” In her 2013 Rhizome essay “Elsewhere, After the Flood: Glitch Feminism and the Genesis of Glitch Body Politic,”, Russell proposed that “the glitch encourages a slipping across, beyond, and through the stereotypical materiality of the corpus.” Russell's concept of "glitch feminism" highlights the transformative potential of glitch art and its ability to allow for a more fluid navigation beyond the confines of stereotypical corporeal representations.