In digital photography, glitches are usually avoided at all costs. However, there are some who welcome the whimsical aesthetic of glitch art. Here are four of the best Android apps that can be used to add artificial glitch effects to your images.
What is glitch art?
Generally, the word glitch refers to a visual or audio malfunction occurring in a media format.
Music, video games, and digital photography; all technology can succumb to glitches. While often viewed as an unwelcome occurrence, glitches have, over time, garnered a growing amount of creative interest. That’s where glitch art comes in.
Glitch art is created by artists who embrace the nature of the glitch for its aesthetic and audible qualities. By either intentionally creating glitches or capturing them as they occur organically, artists elevate the status of the glitch from a technical irritation to an intriguing insight into the technology we surround ourselves with.
One of the earliest examples of glitch art was orchestrated by the art collective JODI. Founded by Joan Heemskert and Dirk Paesmans, JODI operated on experiments like deliberately causing errors on their website to evoke error messages. From there, artists have adopted the glitch aesthetic as a means of conveying ideas and exploring the technological landscape.
How is glitch art made?
Glitch art can be achieved in various ways.
For example, misalignment glitches are the result of a digital file being opened by a program that is ill-equipped to process that specific type of file.
Hardware failure glitches, on the other hand, are caused by tampering with the physical mechanisms of a machine itself.
Databending refers to the manipulation of file data with programs like hex editors.
The appreciation for glitch art has spread across the globe, with many glitch artists sharing their broad range of technical approaches to the format online. And with the growing number of glitch art apps available at little or no cost to the user, glitch effects have been an increasingly popular presence in art and social media.
Now let’s take a look at the best Android apps for creating glitch effects:
Glitch Lab
Glitch Lab operates on the central theme of being “simple to use yet at the same time endlessly configurable.” With an impressive amount of free presents and adjustments available to induce glitched imagery, all alterations can be tweaked with an easy-to-use interface, creating rich layers of visual chaos.
In addition, Glitch Lab offers some basic photo adjustments as well as a Generate function, which allows a user to generate glitch art from scratch, without the use of a photo as a starting point.
Glitch!
Simple to use and with a good amount of free features, Glitch! is one of the most popular glitch art apps available. With glitch effects like Scanner, Hacker, and Paintbrush, Glitch! realistically imitates manual glitching techniques. Premium functions include a Datamosh preset and video-based options.
Glitcho
The Glitcho app allows a user to glitch photos and videos in real-time, which can be handy for quick adjustments and previews. The app also offers a GIF-generating function, which animates some glitch effects applied to images.
Glitcho has a range of free glitch presets that can be applied to both photos and videos. The app also offers additional glitch effects that can be unlocked by watching ads or by upgrading to Glitcho Pro.
EZGlitch
Like Glitcho, EZGlitch provides glitch effects to create glitched photography and videography in real-time. The in-app purchases available in EZGlitch are balanced by the range of filters on offer at no charge to the user.
EZGlitch is also equipped with a simple-to-use Auto GIF function to generate animated glitchy GIF or MP4 files to save and share.
Conclusion
If you’ve recently looked for glitch-based editing apps on the Play Store, you’ll have seen a myriad of different options on offer.
While it may take some trial and error to find the glitch app that works best for you, these four apps are a great entry point, allowing for quick and easy glitch effects on your Android device.
