If you haven't heard of it, GLTCH is a new iPhone app that allows everyday users to make glitch art out of images and GIFs. It has been around for a few months, and inspired though it may be, the app completely undermines the art of the digital (or analog) glitch. Sure, every glitch on the smartphone app is original, but the app-makers made the whole enterprise far too user-friendly. It becomes the glitch art equivalent of Hipstamtic or Instagram and its Holga and Diane F+ camera filters."Turn any image or animated GIF into a beautiful mistake with the free GLTCH app," boasts the app's website. "Getting started is easy—simply import a picture or animated GIF from your camera roll or grab one from the search gallery. Choose a GLTCH and then save your creation to your phone."I'm not a glitch art purist, but getting started shouldn't be too easy, as with anything. There needs to be some sort of effort beyond snapping a photo, importing it into an app, and tapping the phone a few times.I made use of glitch back when I used to make video art, but never as the sole aesthetic modus operandi. It was, more or less, an unintentional accompaniment. More recently, I accidentally discovered that the iPhone's panorama setting creates amazing glitches. The pan function's propensity toward glitch isn't exactly news, but it does take considerably more effort to craft a neat glitch than tapping Chop & Screw, Melt, or Ghost on the GLTCH app.The true charm of the glitch is found in software or other technology collapsing under information overload or other triggers. The same is more or less true with analog glitches. For example, the iPhone's pan function can't handle quick movement, and melts several slivers of the panorama together. In other instances, the pan function creates stacatto-like geometric blocks that are almost cinematic in appearance. The GLTCH app, on the other hand, applies a kind of hip cuteness to this generation's pathological desire to create visuals that are cool but ultimately culturally homogenous. Naturally, users upload their images to Tumblr, the vortex of homogenous digital imagery.GLTCH might be worth downloading as an educational tool in acquiring a very basic understanding—on a superficial level—of glitch and the art it can yield. The philosophical underpinnings of glitch, however, are neutered or at the very best trivialized. It shares some similarities with Drift in that respect. Drift is an app that aims to take users on psychogeographical strolls by directing people down streets, and prompting them to look at certain areas—when the whole point of psychogeography is to do this without any mediation at all.If GLTCH encourages some kids or even a few thousand adults to dive further into glitch art, then perhaps it's worth it. But I wouldn't expect to find a great understanding of the methods or motivations behind glitch from the app.
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