a love letter to glitches && Glitch Art by jonCates, curator ★

when did you 1rst fall in love wit Glitch Art?

i love glitch && Glitch Art
i fell in love wit glitch && Glitch Art since the start, since the beginning of Glitch Art

we when 1rst met,

we when we 1rst encounter,

when you
first
fall in love,

feels like a song

whenever that occurs, is the first moment
our first introduction
to Glitch Art

feels like singing: everything is new to us,
everything is for us
when we love
it is like it has never happened before
but for others, like me, we have fallen in love with glitch && Glitch Art again, always already over && over again, across these years that span the distances, the bridge the difficulties, we connect to those of us, like myself, who are now && mayhaps have always already been in love wit glitch && Glitch Art so long, working on it, building it, taking care of it, cherishing it, to make it all possible for everyOne all the times, plural, open, always new, like this moment is new, always the first love

a heart radically open
a glitcHeart
heard a
word:

i hope we can continue
building relationships, wit glitch && Glitch Art togethers
relational because we are in fact
together, plural
we remember

Memories, our
memories of Glitch Art

across resolutions, formats, file types

i remember, even when we were younger we would glitch
i remember that there are constraints, boundary states, places where the limits of memory are found
feelings

How does this Glitch Art make you feel?

to see and feel, to hear and recall the resolutions
and resolve the experience as direct experiences
on screen
the file
found

Get lost in the details

zoom into the PNG, a maze of pathways, in the metaphorical garden of forking paths, the PNG has file constraints, edges, to zoom in to
forking paths is a reference you know?

we can find our way through the complex ever-changing technosocial landscapes we love, emotional landscapes of glitch && Glitch Art, where technology is material power, and power materialized, made real in the world, Glitch Art. those are different types of powers: compute powers, electricity, narrative realities, origin stories, hystories, and codes crafted

We have our originating narratives of Glitch Art, our initial stories of how we first fell in love

How did we come to be?

This account, we believe

is active

TRUE

NAMES

You who were present at the beginning, we are a Glitch Art, the Art of Surprise,
We are a Glitch Art now we find
movement, momentum, tmoments are fleeting, more ephemeral feeling, return differently to be
new configurations. Reorganize data even when we dissolve or dismantle into more disorganized states of entropy, can be the chaotic good or …(?) … still, we are axxually opening up
our glitcHearts at the boundary states
boundaries
push
strings
power pulling && to release the loop forevers

our culture is always made of complex slippery shapes
we can explain this way: glitch is to slip, away from the grasp,
searching to find
our ways

since beginning

We are always early,
we are the development and purpose of Glitch Art
early

We,
Glich Artists
we are working
to imagine
Glitch Art

works…
works,

working,

we made Art real in the world
we made real Art of glitches

working glitches,
glitching

still at work,
working

unbroken
in loops

BREAK
to play
a game

take a break
BREAKING
perfectly looping the time
now
we took a break because breaking is like glitches glitching games
we love to break the state of play, to push our boundaries beyond

these feelings

as i said at FUBAR before, in the beforetimes, 2019, in person, ⚡ Glitches 💖 Games && Games 💖 Glitches ⚡
“Glitches and games go together since forever.”

let us look back to the beginnings
(plural)
togethers
(plural)
we
find Jamie Faye Fenton, she is at the start of the Digital Art of Glitch, playing games, making Art, at the beginning of digital Glitch Art we find her, in Chicago, programming, hacking together small scale technologies for personal && social transformation
she is inside this computer:

building it, breaking it, glitching it, from the inside out && outside in
she is an expert, through && through, coding and creating:

★ BASIC ZGRASS: A Sophisticated Graphics Language for the Bally Home Library Computer — Jamie Fenton, Tom DeFanti, and Nola Donato (1978)

she is playing the games she made:

★ Bally Arcade / Astrocade – Bally BASIC Demo (1978)
★ Bally Astrocade Game: Gunfight & Checkmate & Calculator & Scribbling (1978)

she is glitching games intentionally to create the first Glitch Art as we know it
intentional
digital
Glitch Art in 1978
she is recording her Glitch Art to analog videotape
which will be digitized over time, uploaded, shared, && now on your screen, a stream of Glitch Art from 1978 rediscovered repeatedly 2000s, 20TEENs, 2020s, today

a stream of glitches
a glitch stream

we can never be in the same glitches twice because we / glitches / are inherently unstable
even when fixed in formats found sum solid ground but the ground is moving technology,
running glitches through you like water, we dissolve into the flows of signals, electricity
is power
electrical
power
and
you

streaming consciousness through glitches we experience
in real times

our perspectives,
break open

broken window,
open format

breaking beautiful, beautifully broken open
the categories to be who you are and it is beautiful

now we are new,
always nonlinear
branching narrative realities.

Narrative realities are the stories we tell, individually and/or collectively, within our cultures of Glitch Art, shaping reality or our understandings of our realities, meaning glitches, the meanings we make given our experiences (of glitches).

Narrative realities make meanings meaningful
imperfect puzzle pieces that only fit togethers
in Glitch Art, we are all
incomplete pictures
beautiful glitches

Passages. On the way to a place, pause to watch in the hallway and wandering, wondering outLoud: Where are we now?
Are we near the beginning or the end? It depends on,
Where do we begin?
Tell the stories (our narrative realities)
Glitch Art narratives are yours to tell
Which words will you choose to shape our them?

Said quietly
each one individually
all bring together
in this place
is a text to
collect
files
you make && i choose to say these words to you like a song, like a stream of consciousness glitching, repeating the parts of our glitcHearts float poems, on the signal transfer

thankYou for sending these files to me
to be a part of FUBAR 2023
Glitch Art selected, as sum would say, i curated
from the deep waters of databases flowing full of glitches, peer into the moving surfaces swims

my curatorial vision of Glitch Art in this moment
remember: to curate is to care
for your glitches

our Glitch Art which i love wit you
forever && ever always
yours

sincerely,
jonCates
for FUBAR 2K23

★ Artworks selected by jonCates include:
INA VARE [LV] : QUOTES [2022]
Jae-Eun Suh [US] : Doubting Memories [2023]
Bay Fragile [Worldwide] : Sorrow As Seen In Bengal Fire [2023]
Somfay [CA] : A Portrait Of The Artist At Work [2023]
Tehno_Miking [RS] : 9 sec VHS Pinball video clip [2023]
Rangga Purnama Aji [ID] : Power Pull and Release [2023]
Egle Saka [UK] : ISOLATION ROOMS [2023]
jrdsctt [US] : ｄｒｐ＿０９ | nøw đɨssøłvɇ mɇ [2023]
drain [US] : dc_91 – adjacently aqueous aberration [2023]

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Collection & text: jonCates

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Fubar curatorial collections are a part of the /’fu:bar/ 2023 Glitch Art Exhibition program.