Gender and Technological Failures in Glitch Music

Abstract

Currently, there is a (re-)emergence of theoretical work on glitch in art and culture. With its ‘aesthetics of failure’ and Deleuzian theoretical orientation, glitch music seems to stand for an alternative approach to sound technology and music that does not conform to hegemonic masculinity. However, closer inspection reveals that many aspects of glitch are conventionally gendered as masculine: mostly male protagonists; a narrow focus on technology, tools and innovation; a tendency towards abstraction and minimalist (quasi-)modernist aesthetics. ‘Failure’ features in glitch music as a heuristic device and serves as the basis for the development of a new style or movement, new ‘territories’, new techniques, new software tools and new sound material. Through recording, processing, editing and sequencing, the glitches are domesticated. The masculinity of glitch music is one of men creating new practices and opportunities in a male environment. While the alternative conception of sound technology displayed by the work of female artists such as Huba de Graaff and Cathy van Eck is broad and hybrid and takes the situatedness of its practices into account, glitch music displays a narrow notion of both technology and music.

Keywords:

• Glitch Music
• Gender
• Masculinity
• Music Technology
• Avant-garde

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] For a more detailed discussion of such gender symbolism in music technology, see McCartney (1995, 1997) and Théberge (1997, pp. 93–130).

[2] I thank Vincent Meelberg for suggesting this question.

[3] The essay is reprinted in Cox and Warner (2004).

[4] According to Turner,

In most cases, post-digital music does not take its listener back to its source. While the post-digital audience may well know what a skipping CD sounds like, the ability to ‘zoom in’ and isolate it from its everyday context is not technologically commonplace. The noise floor of a computer sound card may be even more difficult to recognize as a source for a post-digital composition. Under these circumstances the notion of ‘failure’ may be more abstract for the post-digital audience than it is for the post-digital composer. (2003, p. 82)

[5] For an extensive discussion of the artistic uses of skipping CDs by Oval and others, see Stuart (2003) and Kelly (2009).

[6] Between 2000 and 2002, Clicks & Cuts 1–3 were released with two to three CDs each. Following the bankruptcy of the distributor EFA and label Mille Plateaux, the successor MillePlateauxMedia released Clicks & Cuts 4 (one CD) in 2004. Much later, in 2010, after several takeovers of the label Mille Plateaux, Volumes 5 and 5.1 appeared without the involvement of the original initiator of the Clicks & Cuts series, Mille Plateaux founder Achim Szepanski. In this article Clicks & Cuts 1–4 are taken as representative of the glitch music movement; Clicks & Cuts 5 and 5.1 are not addressed.

[7] Instead of immateriality, ‘transmateriality’ may be a better term for this aspect of digital processing: the same digital information is identical on different media or material substrata (Whitelaw, 2003, p. 97). Whitelaw points to the abundance of metaphors of materiality for digital sound (such as ‘particles’) and considers this a distraction from the real material elements (such as acoustic sound, listening and embodied experience): ‘the digital particle is a reflection of an intensely inward-looking, reflexive stance, a geekish fascination with the tools and processes of digital audio’ (2003, p. 99).

[8] The philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze figures prominently in these essays; the name of the CD label Mille Plateaux is derived from Deleuze's book of the same title.

[9] The imperfections of analogue synthesisers are related to, for example, unstable, drifting frequencies of oscillators resulting in fluctuating parameters:

much of what people like about analogue synths is that they’re not perfect: envelopes sometimes don’t behave as predictably as they're supposed to, filters distort, square waves are anything but truly square, and oscillators aren’t always perfectly in tune with one another. Some say it's these imperfections that make analogue synths seem like “real” instruments, at least compared with the sterile sound of some digital synths. (Anonymous, 2013)

[10] On Clicks & Cuts 2.

[11] Tba (2) is an alias of Natalie Beridze.

[12] A few other women are part of a collaborative duo with a man.

[13] See also Thaemlitz's website http://www.comatonse.com and Thaemlitz (2003).

[14] From her website, http://www.poemproducer.com/info.php, accessed 22 April 2015. See Rodgers (2010a) for an interview with Antye Greie.

[15] Diederichsen (2001), in the booklet of Clicks & Cuts 2.

[16] In The anxiety of influence (1973), Bloom argues that poets are driven by anxiety about the influence of their precursors, from which a ‘strong’ poet has to break free (1997). In turn, feminist theorists and literary critics Gilbert and Gubar (1979) argue that this Oedipal relation of writers to their forefathers is male-oriented.

[17] The accompanying music video features visual glitch elements as well, debunking the transparency of the medium by, for example, showing backgrounds screens (see Benson-Allott, 2013).

[18] The long tradition of glitch in the visual arts is beyond the scope of this article, but see Menkman (2011) and Betancourt (2014).

[19] See the research project ‘Sublime Imperfections: Creative Interventions in Post-1989 Europe’ directed by Ellen Rutten at the University of Amsterdam, 2015–2020 (http://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/research-projects/i/29/13229.html).