BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY

EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

 

The Glitch in Architectural Design

Sandy Lichfield, University of Massachusetts Amherst

 

ABSTRACT

The lexicon of design is not unlike the periodic table used in chemistry- when a new element is discovered and added to the chart, the relationships between the existing properties increase as the patterns of combination multiply and synthesize. As contemporary art practices infiltrate the design fields, practitioners and educators question how new- and often subversive- movements contribute to this periodic language.

This paper will explore the implications of glitch art in design practice and pedagogy. Glitch art aestheticizes malfunctioning “bugs” in digital programming, presenting ironically pleasing and beautiful images of technical failures. The term, which wasn’t coined until after 2000, is rooted in 20th century art movements, like Dada, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, which prioritize automatism and chance to generate ideas.

The glitch provides us with a new perspective with which to view accidents. “It transitions between artifact and filter… between radical breakages and commodification processes.” In her Glitch Studies Manifesto, Rosa Menkman urges one to “dispute the operating templates of creative practice” by refusing to stay locked “between contradictions like real vs. virtual, ob-solete vs. up-to-date, open vs. proprietary or digital vs. analog.” Instead she advocates for an appreciation of contradictory filters and their noise-artifacts.

In a discipline that seeks to provide order and organization to space and place, how will future architects and designers embrace and address these notions of disruption, confusion and malfunction? This paper will examine some recent innovative developments in architectural design that integrate glitch art. It will focus on ways to introduce these aesthetic signifiers of our time to students with experimental assignments, research, and class discussions. Finally it will speculate on some of the effects glitch art might have on future design practices, including urban design and cultural representation.

 

BIO

Sandy Litchfield is an Artist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She teaches courses that lie at the intersection of art, architecture, design and writing. Her studio practice– which focuses on contemporary representations of landscape and urban ecology¬– includes painting, installation, public art and hybrid digital collage. Litchfield has received numerous grants and commissions for her work including the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and the New York City’s Public Art for Public Schools. In 2007 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has presented papers at the 31st and 32nd National Conference for the Beginning Design Student and Research Based Education, Architectural Association of Educators (aae) at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.