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I remember walking through a portal, beyond a door in the side of a stone building. Entering it meant exiting the game, signalling the end of the demo. The courtyard was anonymous, a grass floor with walled surroundings. I attempted to walk through the portal. Something different happened however; I seemed to slip in between the portal and courtyard. A gap in the game’s physics engine, a crack in the sequence of expected events. I had a sensation of falling, of being transported or teleported. The land around me changed. I was taken into the next level, forbidden by the publisher. Although I was elated by this new discovery, it came at a price. All the colours had been inverted. Instead of sombre greens, yellows and blues, everything became ultraviolet. The vibrancy of colour took over. White, orange, turquoise and purple outlined everything.I had fallen into a fantastic dungeon of colour, not being able to find a way out. Nothing but doors, I wandered through countless corridors trying to find a way out. Each room was built solely of doors. Through each door another room, with doors in every direction. At some point I gave up, I could not find anything in this flawed palace.

Described above is a memory of a digital glitch¹ I witnessed at seven years old. Even from that age I was addicted to computer games. A playable demo, of the Legends of Valour² a playable demo, came free with my family’s monthly subscription to PC Format³. The encounter with such a significant error, radically altered my perception of virtual reality. Mistakes and faults are often detrimental to considered structure. This experience revealed that in certain circumstances, perceived flaws can possibly provide tantalising opportunities to see beyond the original intentions of an author's work. I want to explore this idea by taking it outside the technological and into a wider context.

Glitches exist within all types of computer software. These programming errors are often corrected in the initial stages of testing. However, some of the mistakes manage to slip through. My experience was no exception. Using the memory as a template, I intend to focus on those videogames⁴ where the player occupies a virtual landscape from a first-person perspective. Assuming a three dimensional character, glitches can lead to falling or flying. The spatial perception of the player is subverted. You are lifted into another dimension, one which is rarely replicated intentionally. Entering a new location, the players still exists within the game’s parameters but not the representational perimeters. Out of bounds, the player does not even exist within a looped space, having pierced the programmed frame. This digital phenomenon can then be understood as an interruption of a virtual reality.

An illustration of glitching can be found in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind⁵ , the player is able to exploit ‘in-game’ objects and effects to reach speed 3000⁶ . Although laughably this number may seem arbitrary, it is the value you have to attain if you break the game. Whole buildings and geographic features are rendered meaningless (fig.1) This effect is known as ‘clipping’. Clipping is originally used for designers to move like ghosts, transparently through space to aid 3D design. This can give a better overall understanding in designing spatial layout.

Overlaps in level design, glitches in the code and flaws in the physics engine allow for potential opportunities where this phenomenon can occur. The player enters into an undefined reality, regaining their individualism, as they literally explore these newly opened rabbit-holes.  The glitch has acquired a cult status when interrupting videogames, this can be seen for instance via websites such as glitchblog.com. A more infamous example can be found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas⁷ where it is possible to access a secret location known as ‘Blue Hell’. By ascending through a hole in the ceiling of a gym, the play can fall beneath the game (fig.2). Still alive, the protagonist must commit virtual suicide in order to escape. The usual narrative ceases to exist as nothing was scripted for this space

‘I remember walking through a portal, beyond a door in the side of a stone building. Entering it meant exiting the game, signalling the end of the demo. The courtyard was anonymous, a grass floor with walled surroundings.’ ⁸

Apart from digitally coded, the idea of a script is one of direction. When ordered directives are wrenched apart, the system of commands break down. With the sudden stop of direction, there is a tension. The participant is left to wait, floating in limbo. The viewer is not often allowed to infiltrate this space, the author or artist occupies it, overseeing the expanse. Considering the mental strangualtion involved in subverting dense bureaucracy (see Josef K in Kafka’s The Trial (1925)); one can appreciate not just how these scripted events can exist in real life, but the sheer physical effort to bypass them. In Tino Sehgal’s ‘This Progress’ ⁹ , the viewer is physically embedded in the artwork, within scripted events. The artist had instructed actors to lead the viewer around the ICA (it was a stifling experience).

As I was led into the ICA café space, I glimpsed other groups obviously being led. In that moment, my feeling of exasperation lifted. I knew I was inside a script. From this reflection, I had regained control as an individual. Currently in contemporary art there are just a handful of artists who have utilised the glitch. Artists such as Suzanne Treister, Joseph DeLappe and Cory Arcangel create, appropriate and modify their own software. The collaborative duo JODI modified a notorious computer game for their project SOD¹⁰ . Adapting the structure of Wolfenstein 3D¹¹, they attempt to subvert the game’s dynamics by substituting the original coded elements, for geometric shapes giving it a minimalist aesthetic. One could then navigate this new artificial landscape (fig.3).  Experientially, JODI comments that it gives the impression of being ‘inside a perspective engine like a drawing machine, so you really feel that your movements together with the code is drawing all the time according to your movements.’ ¹²

‘I attempted to walk through the portal. Something different happened however; I seemed to slip in between the portal and courtyard. A gap in the game’s physics engine, a crack in the sequence of expected events.’ ¹³

To connect the imagination to the virtual, we can look at how artificially formulated  worlds have been constructed in the past. From the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, carefully constructed Euclidian perspectives have been used, combined with explicit allegorical nature articulating religious or mythical narratives.

They functioned by reducing the subject into a single pictorial moment. Craig Owens describes it as a ‘radical condensation of narrative into a single, emblematic instant...’ ¹⁴ The paintings in presenting the ancient by allegory; using a temporally abstract space ‘were thus lifted out of a continum...’ ¹⁵ The weakness lies in their underlying allegorical nature which fundamentally led to extinction. Giotto’s finesse in using Angels to peel back the canvas reveals just how the flawed nature of representation is, especially when describing the Divine. In Giotto Di Bondone’s The Last Judgment inside theScrovegni Chapel, (Padua, Italy, 1303-1310) two angels roll back the image to show what lies beyond (fig.4). Margaret Wertheim illustrates:

 'Here Giotto reminds us that all depictions of soul-space are ultimately illusions. Just as Dante understood that Heaven is beyond language, so Giotto knows it is beyond pictorial representation. Medieval depictions of soul-space, especially Heaven, were never meant to be taken literally; they were always metaphorical. But if art could never capture the true reality of Heaven, it could least point the viewer in the right direction. Thus, through the rents in the image we catch a tantalizing glimpse of the true reality beyond – two jewelled doors, the pearly gates themselves.'¹⁶

Virtual realities provide us with new ways to think about our physical space. They can be used as possible illustrations for other theoretical dimensions operating outside our own immediate reality. Not just in a metaphorical space that Wertheim suggests, but as mathematical models of experimental physics.

 As the temporality of narrative disintegrates, the sense of story vanishes turning the receiver into an observant individual. It becomes metaphorical in one sense, hinting at what cannot be described. As space malfunctions, so does the narrative, which gives rise to implications of infinity.  The definitions of space are fractured.

‘I had a sensation of falling, of being transported or teleported. The land around me changed. I was taken into the next level, forbidden by the publisher.’ ¹⁷

The visceral and surreal elements enable the audience to become lost in the rhythm of the narrative of wonderful imagery. Parallels can be drawn to the intentions of the Surrealists. In this movement, chance, mistake and ‘randomness’ were utilised. Patrick Waldberg writes that ‘The unconscious, chance, served them as springboards, furnishing the initial impulse, the direction, the harmonic curve of the work’ ¹⁸. The art work itself came from the ‘ordering’ and ‘interpretation’. While Surrealist imagery has some explorative qualities it is constructed purposefully. Randomisation in some new media work may combat this contrivance. However trying to apply Dali’s methods of “paranoiac criticism” to the glitch would be misleading. There are no sexual, psychoanalytical insights which can be gained from these new spaces. In the virtual world the spaces do not respond to your own thoughts. On painting, Breton writes that ‘The external object had broken with its customary surroundings, its component parts were somehow emancipated from the object in such a way as to set up entirely new relationships with other elements, escaping from the principle of reality while still drawing upon the real plan.’ ¹⁹ Although this is specifically about the art-historical ‘object’, the digitally generated world contains similar attributes, composed of wire-frame elements constructed on artificial planes. A digital glitch could possibly be used as a Surrealist break.

Many Surrealist films attempted to form a bridge between the conventional and the imagined. The first savage scene in Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou²⁰ (1928), the slicing of the eyeball, severs the narrative from the viewer. Writing on Surrealist films, Graeme Harper and Rob Stone propose that ‘Surrealism is there in cracks between the dislocated narratives, disassociated events and disturbing imagery of horror, science fiction, film noir, animation, documentary and any other genre…’ ²¹ The Surrealist’s use of dream imagery with the dislocation between context and object, acts as a catalyst in the disintegration of authored space. Escaping the logic of imagery and its subversion is paramount, which ‘does not often reveal itself to the bait of logic.’ ²²

‘Although I was elated by this new discovery, it came at a price. All the colours had been inverted. Instead of sombre greens, yellows and blue, everything became ultraviolet. The vibrancy of colour took over. White, orange, turquoise and purple outlined everything.’ ²³

In the Laurel and Hardy film ‘Way out West’ (1937) (fig.5) a projected screen back-drop shows a bustling town, the two legendary comedians dance in front of the bartender’s patrons. This is all a fake, an attempt to show something which the production budget couldn’t stretch and technology couldn’t respond to. Blue-screen is a digital version of this otherwise identical technique. Digitally generated landscape is a similar falsehood. The space has mathematically defined limits. The boundaries are rendered invisible with animated textures of ambiguous blue sky, which create the illusion of an infinite horizon. Glitches can allow the user to find their way through these, a tear in the back-drop. The space accessed by the glitch is uncharted.

Legends of Valour, uses the traditional narrative theme of the heroic protagonist; a key ingredient in most single-player games. The player must embark upon on a quest to save the city of Mittledorf. Lev Manovich, in his book The Language Of New Media states ‘In contrast to modern literature, theatre and cinema, which are built around psychological tensions between characters and movement in psychological space, these computer games return us to a ancient forms of narrative in which the plot is driven by the spatial movement of the main hero, travelling through distant lands, to save the princess, to find the treasure to defeat the dragon, and so on.’ ²⁴ Understanding this position can help illuminate the player’s perspective when the collapse occurs. The popular genre of ‘Fantasy’ in contemporary culture, often references directly, imagery used in ancient tales. Where first-person perspective is used the player is forced to directly embody the hero. The game’s narrative becomes arbitrary however when glitching occurs. The player must make their own choice to return to the original default. The ancient tales of The Mabinogion can provide a useful illustration of this context. The Mabinogion (recorded circa.1200) is a collection of Welsh stories that were original oral in conception and consumption. The Mabinogion features notions of ‘fantastic’, articulated with evocative imagery. Oral storytelling is an example of how gaps between points of information can occur. The storyteller’s evolving interpretation, coupled with surreal elements. Tending towards the nonsensical, they become surreal. Our initial perception of what is anticipated shatters:

'Peredur rode towards a river valley whose edges were forested, with level meadows on both sides of the river; on one bank there was a flock of white sheep, and on the other a flock of black sheep. When a white sheep bleated a black sheep would cross the river and turn white, and when a black sheep bleated a white sheep would cross the river and turn black. On the bank of the river he saw a tall tree: from roots to crown one half was aflame and the other green with leaves.' ²⁵

Here the knight Peredur encounters an imagined scenario inside an imagined scenario. It is thought that the Bards learnt the basic outline of the story, which in the retelling intertwined points of narrative with their own style of dramatic description. Jeffery Gantz writes that ‘Like other storytellers, the Celtic bards possessed a large repertoire, and like other storytellers they accomplished this feat by memorizing not every word of a tale…but only the outline, for they could fill in the details extemporaneously.’ ²⁶ Each distinct retelling of the stories would evolve the imagery. Over time as oral stories decline, there is a slow disintegration of narrative ‘…the very freedom which characterizes oral transmission ineluctably led to oversights and misunderstandings which contributed to the deterioration of the plot and the obfuscation of the original themes and structures...’ ²⁷ Absurdities, generated from the irregularities provide more strength to the imagery. The Mabinogion frequently deviates from strict narrative structure, throwing the reader outside of any definite sense of time and space. The conflict between narration and description in the Mabinogion causes problems stability of chronology. The instability lifts the narrative outside of a causal chain. Time and the events that take place often seem inconsequential. This gives a sense of the Otherworld, another reality outside our own.

The concept of space fluctuates in the Mabinogion; approaching the abstract as minute and epic distances meld together. They present an example of an ancient form of narrative, constantly “driven by the spatial movement of the hero”. Gantz writes of the artistry found in the Mabinogion, that ‘The colour and energy of The Mabinogion, and its wealth of bizarre and fantastic episodes, scarcely require comment; yet imagination is never completely divorced from reality. There is throughout a tension between rigid and plastic, concrete and abstract, real world and otherworld, necessity and desire – a tension which contributes richly to the detached, almost dreamlike quality of these tales: tangible and yet not quite real.’ ²⁸

Immersed in a virtual environment, the player becomes the single active narrator. There is no outside communication. The absurd descriptive elements in the Mabinogion seem to push the story outside of the mundane. Gantz describes the Mabinogion as being ‘…characterized by a partiality to ambiguity and paradox, and a sharply defined aversion to the dour realities of time, place and everyday life.’ ²⁹ The tales do not adhere to a narrative causal chain; they depart beyond anything resembling a time-line. The story of ‘Peredur son of Evrawg’ contains the telling of a ritual held in the 'Fortress of the Marvels’ ³⁰:

'Then Peredur sat to one side of his uncle and they talked. He saw two lads entering the hall and then leaving for a chamber; they carried a spear of incalculable size with three streams of blood running from the socket to the floor. When everyone saw the lads coming in this way they set up a crying and a lamentation that was not easy for anyone to bear, but the man did not interrupt his conversation with Peredur – he did not explain what this meant, nor did Peredur ask him. After a short silence two girls entered bearing a large platter with a man’s head covered with blood on it, and everyone set  up a crying and lamentation such that is was not easy to stay in the same house. Then a chamber was prepared for Peredur and he went to bed.' ³¹

The bard, as storyteller, is not constricted to an original. The Bard has freedom with a tale’s ‘fluid state’ ³²  to describe and dramatize. With subsequent retellings more paths of narrative are unfurled, like the increased fractalisation of multiple-dimensions. The novel can be seen as an antithesis of the tale. The author holds the reader captive within narrative. Walter Benjamin writes about this conflict: ‘The storyteller takes what he tells from experience – his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening to his tale. The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplace of the novel is the solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concerns, is himself uncounseled, and cannot counsel others.’ ³³ Benjamin remarks on the novel’s autonomy, that ‘…there is no story for which the question as to how it continued would not be legitimate. The novelist, on the other hand, cannot hope to take the smallest step beyond that limit at which he invites the reader to a divinatory realization of the meaning of life by writing “Finis.”’ ³⁴ Considering the digital world, the glitch emancipates the player by removing the limitations of autonomy. The player is no longer a consumer but an individual. The glitch in this regard can be seen as the junction between these two states. With the controls beneath your fingers you have the opportunity to wonder and explore in a world that was never meant to exist. Does this give the player a chance to envisage the thought-process of the designer? The closed entity is broken apart.Hermetic outcomes are destroyed, as we see through the seals. The resistance of autonomy seems futile. This is especially the case when faults, mistakes and gaps generate the potential of exploration. When narration exists in a computer game it follows a traditionally linear path. The exceptions of glitches provide escape routes.

Although the storyteller works with a loose structure, both the narrator and audience are complicit in the exchanging of information. Taking contemporary art, perhaps this experience in the virtual realm can help us to analysis the physical world in which the site-specific installation operates in. Perhaps in this sense it can function as a post-modern, analytical tool. Owens’ writes how post-modernism, through its ironic position ‘…speaks of itself, it is no longer to proclaim is autonomy, its self-sufficiency, its transcendence; rather, it is to narrate its own contingency, insufficiency, lack of transcendence. It tells of a desire that must be deconstructive thrust is aimed not only against the contemporary myths that furnish its subject matter, but also against the symbolic, totalizing impulse which characterizes modernist art.’ ³⁵

The moments of breakdown provide a framework for us to reflect upon how we actually appreciate cultural signifiers, which exist inside a format with defined boundaries.  Accidents, mistakes and random occurrences have an interesting role in the seeming appearance of causality around us.

Although we expect one thing to coherently lead to another, the unexpected can occur.  Ideas of layered realities have been manufactured even in a literature. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (fig.6) is a prime example of ‘nonsense’ imagery, leading the famous protagonist through a world without rules. Global, virtual realities, such as Second Life³⁶ accessed by millions, is an extreme escapist supplement to their physical reality.  Perhaps this essay really questions the translation between post-modern, artificial environments, from those constructed in the past.  Crucially for Barthes: ‘ “…soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively…finally outside of any function other than that that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enter into his own death…” ³⁷’.

Considering that the author may have died in literary theory, I am proposing the individual, from within the script, can map the cartography of the unauthored glitch. I am not trying to justify these cracks and glitches as a form of new horizon, but show how allowing for accidents in structured environments and scripts can enable exploration of what lies beyond the autonomous artwork or object.

‘Nothing but doors, I wandered through countless corridors trying to find a way out. Each room was built of doors. Through each door another room, with doors in every direction. At some point I gave up, I could not find anything in this flawed paradise. I had fallen into a fantastic dungeon of colour, not being able to find a way out.’ ³⁸

When structure finally disintegrates and authorship is broken, does the viewer become emancipated? Or are they set adrift. When immersed inside a game, and experience a glitch you cannot help but sympathise with the viewer and the new freedom that has been allowed. From an aesthetic perspective, the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi understands the incomplete, the accidental and the mistake as something of truth or beauty. The transient nature the mistake can be appreciated as part of great art. When the rules of the author break the viewer is emancipated. I do not advocate relational aesthetics or a direct conversation between artists and viewer, this conflict is often necessary. But when an error occurs the author has been revealed, the hierarchy has been reset. This can lead to something that transcends what the artist could ever have intended. In terms the post-modern the viewer can perhaps achieve a more acceptable compromise. Without tools the viewer may well be powerless, a mere explore in accidental environment. Given tools however, or more relaxed bounds of participation, a whole different avenues of experience could be explored.