On the De-Familiarizing and Re-Ontologizing Effects of Glitches and Glitch-Alikes

Glitches and deliberately fabricated "glitch-alikes" are examined here as expressive devices capable of disrupting players' assumptions about the self-consistency of virtual worlds. The central thesis holds that such anomalies can defamiliarize digital experience, prompting critical reflection that may extend outward into how people perceive the actual world, a process the author terms "re-ontologizing." Drawing on modernist and DADA traditions, Shklovsky's concept of ostranenie, and literary currents from Borges to magical realism, the analysis positions glitch-based works as heirs to modernist defamiliarization. The argument is primarily theoretical, and its critical potential is shown to depend on the active interpretive stance of the recipient rather than on the glitch alone.

The analysis distinguishes two modes of deployment. Glitches may function as constitutive, perceived elements of a fictional world, in the manner of magical realism, or as disruptive incursions that unsettle the audience, in the manner of DADA and surrealism. Interactive, persistent digital worlds are identified as giving glitches a distinctive subjunctive capacity to destabilize and expand modes of thinking. Two case studies anchor this claim: ROM CHECK FAIL! (2008), which fictionalizes manufactured hardware glitches while shifting across genres, and Jodi's untitled series of Quake modifications (1996–2001), which exploit programming errors to produce unstable, self-reflexive spaces that subvert conventional game goals. Both are read as expressive, self-reflexive critiques of digital game conventions.

The discussion extends to everyday perception through examples such as the "Dubious Food" cooking interface in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where failed ingredient combinations appear as unappealing, glitch-like outcomes. The paper defines a world phenomenologically as a perceptually persistent, interactive, and behaviorally consistent domain of experience, distinguishing virtual worlds from dreams or hallucinations. It also clarifies that comparing digital systems to human cognition does not imply that computers are conscious or that glitches reveal non-human forms of being.