Platform Glitch Aesthetics 2023
Digitalvilla Potsdam: What is a glitch (value)?

The Platform "Glitch Aesthetics" is an open space for everyone who wants talk about AI & learn more about the fascinating phenomena of Glitch Aesthetics. "Glitch" in everyday languge is the unexpected event/or result, malfunction of digital or analog artifacts. (The roots of this expression are yiddish.)

GLITCH PHENOMENA 3.0: A new event format in the Digitalvilla (Potsdam-Neubabelsberg) promises fascinating insights into the Alchemy of Glitch Art. From March 22nd to June 30th, the historic villa on Hedy-Lamarr-Platz will open up to an artistic phenomenon that uses digital and analogue errors for aesthetic purposes. The Institute for Business Informatics, which belongs to the University of Potsdam (near the Griebnitzsee Campus), invites to public lectures, performances, workshops and presentations that make the artistic narratives of this technology-oriented art movement visible. The initiator is the Potsdam Curator and Art Historian Verena Voigt M.A. (GFZK e.V.) in collaboration with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Norbert Gronau, Chair of Business Informatics, Processes and Systems, as an expert in the field of digitization.

What is Glitch (Art)?
“Glitch” is something that oscillates between protest, deconstruction, identity and feminism. The word's etymology is rooted in the Yiddish expression "gletshn"; A euphemism has always been transported via the German 'Schlittern' to the 'Ausrutscher'," explains the Curator and initiator of the platform Glitch Aesthetics Verena Voigt M.A. Glitch describes an unexpected event/or result, a malfunction of digital or analog artifacts. In art history, the deconstruction of visuality is a constant and an expression of critical artistic practice. Nam June Paik, JODI, Rosa Menkman, Lisa Paclet and many others disassemble media, destroy or damage files. Unstable color landscapes, portraits and abstract formations arise through deliberately programmed mistakes or chance, which can be read as metaphors of upheaval. Freedom and digital alienation are often closely related. In particular, the international political upheavals (2010/11) find an impressive visual language in the deconstructions. While the glitch art movement has been expressing the instability of the digital age in its artefacts since 2002, business informatics also developing an increasingly critical attitude towards unexpected malfunctions of artificial intelligence. Glitch art is currently in 2023 experiencing multiple reinterpretations.

"Rosa Menkman: Lets write a hidden message in the dirty noise of a glitch!", this is the title of the artist talk & first exhibition module of the "Platform Glitch Aesthetics", which will open on March 22 at 7 p.m. The topic is complex & challenging: It's about the digital glitch as a "discrete transformer". Rosa Menkman (Amsterdam) explains the DCT, which hides secret messages in the “dirty noise” of the glitch artifact: so that it can only be decrypted by "insiders". The artist is presenting art works from the series “How Not To Be Read” in the Digitalvilla. At the same time, “uncanny” phenomena of artificial intelligence will be examined: “Das Unbehagen in der KI” is the title of the discurse program, moderated by Verena Voigt M.A.

“In research, we deal with the possibilities and limits of AI and with this series of events we want to raise awareness of the Digitalvilla as a place for discussion.” (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Norbert Gronau).

The focus of the second event on April 24 is the artistic work of the artist Nadja Verena Marcin, who lives in Berlin and New York. She trains a feminist audio chatbot called #SOPHYGRAY that communicates via an APP. In the workshop she gives insights into the training program of the audio bot, which is named after the South African artist and architect Sophy Gray (1814-71) and is characterized by a pleasant aloofness, restraint and intellectuality. A training workshop on this will take place on May 17; this is where Legacy Russell's "Glitch Feminism" manifesto is "read in".

On May 3rd, Katrin Leitner-Peter from Kassel will be a guest in Potsdam. She will talk about addiction to algorithms and the cultural perspective of error attributions. Insights into the training program of the in Dubai trained chatbot "Chyron" are available in June in a workshop with Isaac Sullivan. Further panels are planned, for exemple on the topics ¹You Look Like a Thing & I Love You", "What is a Glitch (value)?" and the “Causa Blake Lemoine”.

One aim of the platform process is to show the complexity and conceptuality of Glitch Aesthetics & Glitch Art. We are interested in this movement because it has a high interface quality ("Schnittstellenqualität"). Art has a hitherto underestimated role as a moderator in revaluation processes. Especially in situations of upheavals, alienation phenomena create legitimate tools for reflection. The Platform Glitch Aesthetics aims also to develop prototypes for (corporate & culture) communication.

Project initiators are the GFZK e.V. in cooperation with the Digitalvilla, Chair of Business Informatics - Processes and Systems/ University Potsdam & the Weizenbaum Institute (Potsdam/Berlin).

The venue is the Digitalvilla, Potsdam, Hedy-Lamarr-Platz (14482 Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany), Karl-Marx-Str. 67 (Neubabelsberg, Griebnitzsee).

Moderation/ Concept: Verena Voigt M.A. (Investigative Curator).
The Platform is supported by the Stiftung Kunstfonds NEUSTARTplus Plattformen der Bildenden Kunst.

Location: Digitalvilla in Potsdam