Flickr Images Corrupted by GlitchBot

The term glitch always seemed best suited for computer programs, video games and electronic equipment, where a slight irregularity in the device or system would create a temporary malfunction with annoying, sometimes even amazing unexpected results. Only the effect was never really considered artistic—until now.

An iPhone application called Decim8 creates digital artifacts in your photographs, producing some interesting glitch art pieces. To share the glitched art, users can upload their glitched images to Flickr and join the "Photographic Destruction" group pool. But these glitchy images feel somewhat processed with large, random cubic bits of rearrangement and color, rather than simply glitched chaos.

GlitchBot, a non-interactive Flickr bot that's been around since June of 2010, grabs Creative Common images from Flickr users, corrupts them, then posts the glitched results with appropriate attribution and compatible licenses. The glitched images are more chaotic than any iPhone app can produce, with most of the original photo completely unrecognizable, hidden by distortion.

GlitchBot works alone on a fixed schedule with no human interaction, producing one glitched image every day and presenting it to the world via its photostream. Check out some of the more interesting art below.

"GlitchBot is an imperfect machine built to create imperfections." Browse the rest at GlitchBot's Flickr photostream.