Glitch, Body, Anti-Body

My essay, “Glitch, Body, and Anti-Body” is now live on Outland art magazine -- I’m very much honored to be invited by special editor and glitch theorist Rosa Menkman and EIC Brian Droitcour to write this piece in conversation with Legacy Russell's foundational book, Glitch Feminism.

From the article, I write: "The computer screen is an arbitrary metaphor for order and legibility—an organizing metaphor not unlike the metaphor of the body itself.” Here I look at what it means for the glitch to break down the metaphor of the screen and what it felt like for the metaphor of my own body to break down after I was hospitalized with acute hypoxic respiratory failure after getting sick from COVID in early 2021.

Read for free on Outland’s website here: https://outland.art/legacy-russell-glitch-feminism/

You can also download a PDF version of the article below.

Whitney (Whit) Pow
A Trans Historiography of Glitches and Errors

In “A Trans Historiography of Glitches and Errors,” I write about the history of glitch art, video games, and computer history as a vitally transgender history, with artist and programmer Jamie Faye Fenton at the heart of it all.

This article was published in the Feminist Media Histories special issue “Urgent Media and Emergent Art.” You can find my article on the University of California Press website here.

I’ve received quite a number of requests from people interested in reading, especially from those who do not have access to scholarly articles. I’m making it available here — you can download and read below.

Reaching Toward Home

My article, “Reaching Toward Home” Software Interface as Queer Orientation” centers on the video game Curtain by Dreamfeel.

In this article, I do a deep dive into the game’s severe use of pixelation as a form of software (dis}orientation, and I look at the way the game is designed to present us with a continuous awareness of presence and mediation of the game’s interface.

This article was published in The Velvet Light Trap’s special issue, “Power, Freedom, and Control in Gaming.” You can find my article on Project Muse here, and you can read and download my article below.

Whitney (Whit) Pow