hyperpop and glitch art
09 Aug 2020The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.
-Toni Cade Bambara
It is no secret that current trends in fashion, music, cinema, etc. are usually heavily influenced by past periods or aesthetics. As I was listening to Jessie Ware’s new album What’s Your Pleasure?, feeling like this sound was directly sourced from the 80s, I couldn’t help but to try to make some parallels between old and new art phenomenons that I enjoy.
Is hyperpop the new rock ‘n’ roll?
Hyperpop is quite new, like it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page now as I’m writing this. But cultural magazines and websites are already on it, trying to define it and to offer some guide to navigate it, some wondering if this new genre is the future of music, and Spotify has already an official hyperpop playlist.
Somewhat similar to PC Music, hyperpop is (that’s my personal take on this) a satyric magnifying glass of pop music with an electronic twist. Overly explicit lyrics, exploration of dark themes on uplifting beat, glitch-like sound are a few characteristics of a typical hyperpop song. The artist SOPHIE is one of the chef de file, and I think her song Faceshopping depict well the vibe and general message of hyperpop. Poppy is also a good example of hyperpop in my opinion (and her whole story is so postmodern in some way). Songs like her Play Destroy track may be an easier entry point to hyperpop.
Don’t get me wrong : I’m not saying that hyperpop sounds like rock’n’roll, we are very far from that. I’m wondering if hyperpop is the new rock’n’roll in its cultural manifestation of rebellion against the status quo.
Lately I have fell across a wonderful book called Season of the Witch : How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll by Bebergal Peter, and that what sparked my interrogation. Here’s a quote from it :
Just as religious traditions have always sought to make sense of their own pagan origins — usually by prohibiting and demonizing the old gods — ministers, parents, and record-burning mobs saw in rock the threat of sex and chaos. Rock’s response was its true salvation : musician pushes out further, conjuring spirits with power chords. When rock was finding its electric sound and its hormonal teenage audience, it chose sex as its expression of agitation. This was its first claim to autonomy, a wriggle of the hips in the face of the religious hierarchy.
This sexual and chaotic component is also to be found in hyperpop. The fear that instilled rock’n’roll could also be instilled by hyperpop artists, even if many of them like to play with the hyper-feminine, the bad and the ugly is never completely exclude from their aesthetic.
Nowadays, religion isn’t this much present, at least, religion isn’t the number one reason of oppression. But I like to think that neoliberalism (and capitalism in general) is the new religion. In that line of thought, there’s a brilliant academic text that compares neoliberalism to a political theology of chance, or, in other words, a politics of divination, but I won’t dive any further in this idea here. Nonetheless, the critics of capitalism and of patriarchy inherent to many hyperpop tracks could, in my opinion, be seen as the hyperpop “wriggle of the hips in the face” of the new world order. And I am also a firm believer of Foucault’s ideas that the repression of sexuality is the ultimate tool of control, therefore I see in this often hypersexualized music a great revolutionary potential.
Right now, I’m trying to find “occult hyperpop” to see if I can check more common points between the rock’n’roll content and the hyperpop’s, but since the occult is getting slowly repopularized I suppose it’s coming eventually.
Is glitch art the new pop art?
Pop art is an art movement from the 1940-1950 from which emerged the iconic Campbell soups artwork by Andy Warhol. Very colorful, and very anchored in the new consummation way of living, here’s some interesting things Wikipedia says about it:
One of [pop art] aims is to use images of popular (as opposed to elitist) culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists’ use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, or combined with unrelated material.
And here’s how Wikipedia again defines glitch art :
Glitch art is the practice of using digital or analog errors for aesthetic purposes by either corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices.
Other keywords linked to glitch art are databending and datamoshing. Glitch art also reached the realms of sex, as glitch porn became a thing. And also here’s an interactive article to understand how digital images work and how easy it is to glitch them.
In 1940, artists like Andy Warhol were impressed by the efficiency of technology. Today, we are realizing how imperfect those technologies actually are. But they are similitude.
For example, glitch art can be produced by almost anybody (therefore isn’t elitist). Open-source software like byebyte allows user to “destroy their files in the name of art” in one simple command line. Glitch art is necessarily created through technological mediums, and also plays with confusion around the context of the subject.
I’m personally more interest in glitch porn than glitch art in general though. Like Louise Matsakis from Vice said :
When you’re looking at a distorted naked torso, or a pixelated couple embracing, it’s impossible to forget you’re viewing them on a screen. You can’t fantasize the subjects are there in front of you, which is what so much of porn is usually about.
And I think it’s something worth coming back to. But the intersection of sex and technology is a gigantic rabbit-hole, so I don’t want to start rambling about that. (But I’ll let here my favorite podcast on the subject, Future of Sex, and the digital zine I’m currently reading on the matter.)
And also, I want to state that I’m not expert in “glitch studies”, but I’ll link here the short version of the Glitch Studies Manifesto of Beyond Resolution.
We can remember ourselves that “Pop Art appreciates popular culture, or what we also call ‘material culture’. It does not critique the consequences of materialism and consumerism; it simply recognizes its pervasive presence as a natural fact”, as stated on ThoughtCo. While the Glitch Studies Manifesto suggest to “[u]tilize glitches to bring any medium in a critical state of hypertrophy, to (subsequently) criticize its inherent politics”, which makes it more political than pop art for say. But there is, in glitch art, a part of this “simple recognition” of the everlasting presence of glitches (instead of materialism) in our technological societies, which could be seen as an actualized take of pop art’s realization since our economy and lives are now way more immaterial than ever.
But yeah, I’m very excited to dig deeper in glitch studies and I’m also experimenting on creating glitch art myself, so no matter if my pop art parallel wasn’t very accurate or relevant in the first place (same thing with my hyperpop and rock’n’roll), I’m glad it gave me an excuse to explore more those fields.