Chance, epiphany, noise, and erring have all played a critical, albeit understated, role in research, and following their obscured trail offers some guidance on using glitch for digital visual studies research. Reed Ghazala, founder of the chance-based art of circuit bending, comments on the role of chance in research. He writes, "Chance is a powerful, creative force whose 'accidents' have not only provided us with art but also the discovery of penicillin, infrared and, well, velcro. Truth is, chance discovery is the root of much of our understanding of the natural laws that govern our very existence" (14). In “From Heuristic to Aleatory Procedures; or, Toward ‘Writing the Accident,’” Victor Vitanza supports Ghazala’s reading of chance-based research. Vitanza explains that “aleatory procedures” in writing and research, which means a “throw of the die” (186), might be viewed as a “condition of the possible still practiced under the sign of the negative” (188). Chance takes what is not (and, is some cases, cannot) be and miraculously brings them into being—it materializes the immaterial and makes possible the impossible. Chance re-casts the order of the world and bucks against its putative laws. It allows writers to access “whole new worlds of writing that heretofore have been forbidden or hidden from us” (191). Furthemore, chance can be a productive means of generating insight in many research contexts. As Paul Feyerabend writes "science is much more 'sloppy' and 'irrational' than its methodological image...For what appears as 'sloppiness', 'chaos' or 'opportunism' when compared with such laws has a most important function in the development of those very theories which we today regard as essential parts of our knowledge of nature. These 'deviations', these 'errors', are preconditions of progress" (160).
Despite such arguments about the power and influence of chance-based practices in research, many research practices and practitioners adhere to linear and fixed models. William M. Trochim et al.’s description of research practices in Research Methods, for example, explains that "In our everyday life we think about the world around us. We consider options and make choices. But much of this thinking is done dynamically, changing and adapting to the circumstances as they unfold. Research is different. It is a conscious effort to concentrate our thinking, to do it in a rational, careful manner. This is the key to the systematic nature of research" (5). For Trochim et al., research is not dynamic, but rather the act of molding one’s thinking and practice into a disciplined and intentional process that privileges rationality. They conclude with the term “systematic” (and associate it with the “nature” of research), suggesting that research (and, by proxy, research methods) embody a specific organization of interconnected parts working together in unity. Their ideas about organization and unity can be found in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's A Treatise on Method. Coleridge explains "The word METHOD...being of Grecian origin...literally means a way, or path, of transit. Hence the first idea of Method is a progressive transition from one step in any course to another; and where the word Method is applied within reference to many such transitions in continuity, it necessarily implies a principle of UNITY WITH PROGRESSION (2). Much of what Coleridge describes is implied in the more general descriptions of research throughout first-year writing textbooks and Rhetoric and Composition more broadly. For example, Wayne C. Booth et al.'s description in The Craft of Research, presents research as “sound ideas based on good information produced by trustworthy inquiry and then presented clearly and accurately” (9). And, more generally, the Oxford English Dictionary defines research as “The act of searching carefully for or pursuing a specified thing…Systematic investigation or inquiry aimed at contributing to knowledge of a theory, topic, etc.” In each definition, method is synonymous with unity, rationality, and discipline.
Given the conflict between traditional research practices and non-traditional chance-based research practices, how ought digital visual studies take advantage of glitch in its research practices? I suggest enacting glitch as a means of “research-creation.” Research-creation is an arts-based approach comprised of interdisiplincary theories and philosophies insisting that "art itself activates and constitutes new forms of knowledge in its own right” (Manning 52). As Owen Chapman and Kim Sawchuk argue in “Research-Creation: Intervention, Analysis and “Family Resemblances,” research-creation favors arts-based research practices because it allows researchers to engage with forms of knowledge that cannot be easily quantified or reflected by traditional research practices. Rather than advocate for systemized, methodical practice, research-creation values “processes that employ the irrational, the random, the unexpected” and acknowledge that “the accidental feed[s] into innovation and into the discovery of new forms” (Poissant). From a research-creation perspective, “the digital age—a common denominator between media and methods of expression—is also [and especially perceived to be] a generator of serendipity, as it increases the number of unforeseen connections and links between disparate elements and flows of signifiers” (Poissant). Rather than relying on typical quantitative and qualitative research apparatuses such as data-driven questionnaires, participant observation, or case studies, then, research-creation methods take place through artistic, experiential practice. As such, for many research-creation practitioners, research-creation practices results in new forms of knowledge that challenge and, in many ways, are unrecognizable through conventional research perspectives.
Research-creation essentially argues that meaning is in the making; glitch, however, demonstrates that meaning can also be in the breaking. When working with glitch in its myriad forms, we should generally pursue a practice that materializes the embeddedness of technology and data within our lives and being. With glitch, this is best accomplished through unconventional and novel operations of technology, often through “misuse” that risks the integrity of the system. This is not simply a facile return to the modernist adage “make it new.” Technology does work, and as Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge argue in Code/Space, that work and its ethics are often deeply blended into and constitutive of our environments and socio-cultural practice. The optics of glitch are intimately connected with technology’s doing, and misuse allows us to illuminate and repurpose data and technology--potentially granting moments of insight into the politics of digitalization. Misuse, as an ethics, moves away from a deterministic relationship with technology in which our exchange is comfortable but compromised; instead, it privileges a relationship in which we and technology are co-constituted and collaborative agents--potentially revealing insights that would remain hidden if technology simply functioned as a tool. In the following section, I outline several strategies for digital disobedience and glitch-based research.
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