The initial abstract of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (2009), infected with and glitched by the PostScript programming language code of PostScript Viruses from 1993. PostScript Viruses’ aesthetics are an early example of Glitch Art, intentionally contrasting with the smooth structures of graphic design and typesetting. Rather than editing the target file manually, its code infects the printer or printing press that the file and those after it are rendered on and changes the meaning of the programming language that those files are expressed in. The artist described PostScript Viruses as “an exercise in aesthetic intervention in networked society”, but did not release it into the wild for ethical reasons. Its existence nonetheless demonstrated that the era’s all-pervasive print media was not safe from media jamming tactics even at its point of production. In doing so it affirms the critical power of art and of digital art in particular.
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