Gameplay Journal Entry #6
“ Glitch is both the product of malfunction and artificial cre-ation.” (113 Pedro) This statement is used in Post-Digital Aesthetics in Contemporary Audiovisual Art to define glitch but from an art perspective. A perspective that many who experiences glitches may overlook at a first glance. With that in mind I wanted to look at lighting glitches and how they can in fact be seen as “art” instead of “destructions or disruptions.” For this week’s Journal I will be going back to Genshin Impact. Being a Cel Shaded game there are many lighting components, and with that a chance to have lighting glitches.
The glitch itself is quite simple, the shader on the player model breaks. leaving us with a black void, and two other light sources. One being a player’s vision and their weapon (if it has a light source.) From an artistic perspective this can easily be seen as a negative space picture, which is a fairly common art style. Even though the shader itself has “failed” the outline it created is perfect for such a piece. However, the main reason why I chose this glitch is (besides it being a great negative space art piece) that people within the Genshin Community have begun to notice this. Instead of complaining that the character menu isn’t function, or that they can’t see their character they look a the glitch and appreciate the new style it brings. People turned the glitches into wallpaper backgrounds of their favorite characters which has inspired a small following of glitch wallpapers within the community. It’s on a small scale but it’s fascinating to see the things the these readings refer to come to life in well… real life.
Works Cited
Ferreira, Pedro. Luisa, Ribas. “Post-Digital Aesthetics in Contemporary Audiovisual Art” 2020. PDF file.
