Temporalities of the Glitch: Déjà Vu

Abstract

Glitch describes the visual and auditory effects of interruptions of electronic signals. Glitches may be caused by naturally occurring electromagnetic noise, by electromagnetic effects of the technology, or by errors in coding, storage or transmission. Glitches have been treated as noise by engineers, but used by artists to foreground the materiality of the medium in recording, transmission and reception. This chapter investigates these interruptions of image/signal, and the deliberate instigation or emulation of glitch effects in fiction, where typically they work to indicate the diegetic authenticity of fictional media, notably in the trans-temporal transmissions of Déjà Vu (2006) which fo..