Glitch vs Kintsugi
グリッチ / 金継ぎ
Glitch comes from UI Expression and Kintsugi from Vessel and Craft Techniques. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Glitch
%20sample%20animation.gif)
Refuses to hide error and corruption, exposing the fragility of the digital medium itself.
Kintsugi
%20-%20Flickr%20-%20dalbera.png)
Kintsugi is the Japanese craft of repairing broken ceramics with urushi lacquer and gold or silver, so the mend is shown rather than hidden. The Getty vocabulary files it under repairing, as a restorative process rather than a style. The break decides where the metal lines run, so one vessel can never produce the same drawing twice.
| Glitch | Kintsugi | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | digital | 15th century– |
| Family | UI Expression | Vessel and Craft Techniques |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Channel shift / Block noise / Scanlines / Dropout | Thin gold or silver lines that follow the break exactly / Line width that varies, widening into filled areas where a chip was lost / A trace of dark lacquer showing at the edge of the metal / Metal lines crossing the vessel's original painted decoration without regard for it |
| Best used for | Expressing uncertainty and system failure · A jolt of tension in music and video | Building a display where broken prototypes or stock are shown mended instead of discarded · Leaving a visible record of repair or revision on a product or a screen |
| Type | Partially corrupt a monospace or plain sans | Add no lettering, and let the metal lines share the surface with whatever marks the vessel already carries. |
| Composition | Build the healthy composition first, then break part of it | The break dictates the lines, so fit the fragments first and then decide how much metal each seam takes. |
| Material | RGB shift, compression noise, missing pieces | Urushi lacquer joins and hardens the pieces, then gold or silver powder is laid over the seam. |
| Caution | Perpetual glitch loses meaning. Stage the difference between normal and broken. | Designing the gold lines before anything breaks places them where no stress runs, and the piece looks patterned rather than mended. |