Interview with Glitch Artist sgt_slaughtermelon | MakersPlace Blog

In this fascinating conversation with the prolific and voluble glitch artist  sgt_slaughtermelon, we discuss the history of glitch, the influence of Kazimir Malevich, glitching emulator videogames, beautifully designed book covers with no named designers, and whether he’s the Michael Bay of Glitch.

MP: Can you tell me about yourself and your history with art and, in particular, glitch media?

SS: I’ve been computer graphics professionally and for fun since I was pretty young. I remember having Kid Pix. That’s a fond memory of the early days of kids making art on computers. 

I started glitch art properly as an adult when I was adjunct teaching. It was supposed to be a crossover between technology students and art students, so we had to pick seminar subjects to teach some practical skills. Glitch art stuck out as really interesting. It’s something technology students ought to learn how to do just because it makes them learn to deal with file formats and how you break them, just good practical knowledge for technology and computer graphics students. 

And then there’s the arts component [to teach]. There’s this whole movement led by people like Rosa Menkman and Michael Betancourt. I would take their stuff and talk about things like, “What does it mean to be making work in a digital space that exists as digital work from the very beginning?” It’s interesting to think about what it means to have images and art that we sort of imagine as being permanent and unbreakable just because it’s digital.

It’s not like a painting where you can spill something on it, or you mess it up, and now it’s ruined. Now, there’s this idea that this art exists almost intellectually; it exists as an idea of art that technically is represented by a certain amount of code that has pixels and so on and so forth. 

Glitch art takes a step back to acknowledge that, yes, this is a digital medium, but it’s still a medium, and it can still break. These are not Platonic forms. It’s just a different kind of material. So, for me, that was interesting to get into and share with students. 

My day job was making graphics, and no one ever asked me to break an image. This was a chance for my job to break things and explore and do the kinds of things that there’s never enough free time for. 

MP: Can you briefly introduce glitch art to our readers?

SS: Yeah. Actually, one of my colleagues was studying Aldo Giorgini recently. He was a really early digital artist who used math to create fractal-type things and optical illusions. I don’t do a lot of analog glitch art, but that’s where it started. People like Max Capacity are doing that kind of stuff, and people like Sara Zucker and Kate the Cursed are exploring circuit bending and malfunctioning gear. 

I think you’ve got to study the difference between a failure and taking the failure of that equipment…