Sophia Tan

January 30th, 2023

Dizzying Glitch Tattoos

No one likes glitches in real life, but glitchy tattoos are a different story

Ever heard the saying, “there’s a glitch in the matrix?” We’re all aware of the theory that humanity is a computer simulation, and often confirm it in our minds when we witness something completely absurd or illogical in everyday life. It’s a perfect parallel to the glitches we experience in technology, which we often write off as minorly inconvenient yet curiously elusive occurrences. Interestingly, glitch tattoos capture this concept beautifully by freezing those fleeting, distorted moments in place on our skin, embracing the beauty in imperfection.

The term “glitch” is said to be derived from the Yiddish “glitsch,” which means “a slip,” or from the German “glitschen” meaning “to slide” or “glide.” It had often been used to describe on-air mistakes or technical abnormalities on the radio and television during the 1940s and 50s. It wasn’t until astronaut John Glenn used “glitch” in his 1962 book, “Into Orbit,” that the word started gaining traction. “Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit,” Glenn explained, “which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it.”

These days we hear the word all the time, specifically in relation to playing video games or when a computer program isn’t running quite as expected. A glitch can be as simple as your webpage freezing up for a moment, to your TV show being cut out mid-scene by a bunch of colorful lines. It’s usually a harmless, split-second error, but everyone knows how irritating they can be if they’re constantly interrupting the flow of whatever you’re doing. Many gamers know, though, that glitches can actually yield beneficial results when taken advantage of in a faulty game.

As jarring and mysterious as glitches can be in real life, they make for incredibly sick glitch tattoos. These types of pieces emulate computer glitches, often exhibiting a distorted or pixelated effect along with a vivid color spectrum. There’s something oddly satisfying in being able to catch a normally slippery, fleeting image mid-motion by freezing them in place on our skin.

These tattoos may be a bit disorienting, but no amount of rubbing your eyes will bring them to clarity. That’s the whole point—there’s beauty in imperfection, and glitches humble us by being incessant reminders of the defects in man-made technology. If we can’t fight them, we might as well embrace them.

 

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