Computer glitches can be beautiful things when they’re not too busy crashing your computer or destroying your painstakingly taken digital photos. The best-known and mostly harmless graphic glitch is probably the “repeating window” one featured in this art installation entitled My Favourite Landscape.
It’s really interesting to see this ubiquitous glitch being conveyed in real life in such a simple and effective way. The artist, Paul Destieu, simply made 500 huge prints of the classic “Bliss” desktop background from Windows XP and then tiled them in a way that resembles the repaint glitch that everyone has encountered at some point or another. While it looks like a simple idea and execution, it must have taken a long time to layer all those images in an way that looks beautiful yet still expresses the spirit of the unintended glitch.
Whenever I encounter this glitch – and I know I’m not the only one – I drag the offending window around the screen, making artistic swirls and waves that last until the screen repaints itself properly. This art piece captures that feeling of spontaneous expression, except that it doesn’t disappear once your computer is back to normal.
I find the most endearing aspect of this installation to be the fact that both the glitch and the desktop background are so familiar to any modern computer-user. Bliss was the default background for the previous generation of Windows, so anytime you passed by a tech store in the first half of the 2000s, you would see this background reflected in a dozen different monitors.
The artist’s choice of display medium is also an interesting one, as the piece is larger-than-life, and instead of being framed like a conventional work of art, My Favourite Landscape has broken free of any constraining window. It seems to reflect the way that this glitch has also broken free of the computer screen and manifested itself in real life.
If you’re looking for more computer-influenced art, don’t miss out on this vintage typewriter art piece showcasing ASCII-style art before ASCII was even around! This art installation created from keyboard keys and this portrait of the Mona Lisa made out of computer folders are also must-sees.
