13:00 - 14:00
Location: Digital Scholarship Lab (G/F University Library)
Submission 103
Glitch Revelations: Al, Trash Aesthetics, and the Dionysian Data-Self
Poster-14
Presented by: Yanlei LI
Yanlei LI 1, Mingyang LI 2
1 Hong Kong Baptist University
2 South China Agricultural University Zhujiang College
In the vast and exponentially growing digital landfill of Al-generated content, the technical pursuit of photorealism and narrative coherence is perpetually shadowed by its own failure. This failure, however, is not an end but a fertile beginning.The algorithmic struggle for character consistency and visual harmony inadvertently gives rise to a pervasive glitch aesthetics—a dynamic and generative form of "trash aesthetics" that is actively recalibrating contemporary sensory perception and aesthetic judgment.

Far from being dismissed as errors, these digital malfunctions and grotesque artifacts are curated and celebrated as a new form of social currency within decentralized, post-media tribes.This phenomenon fuels a distinctly Dionysian revelry in online spaces, where the daily, even hourly, iteration of content prioritizes the visceral thrill of the breakdown over the sterile achievement of technical perfection. Within this carnivalesque sphere, young creators strategically employ symbolic "trash" avatars-glitched, distorted, or otherwise imperfect digital bodies-to navigate a complete, ritualistic life cycle of identity performance.This cycle involves being celebrated as icons (deification) only to be subsequently dismantled or replaced (sacrifice), a process that mirrors the relentless consumption ano disposal inherent to digital culture itself.

Moving beyond a purely techno-deterministic reading, this study adopts an interdisciplinary framework situated at the confluence of digital media art practice and contemporary cultural theory.It asks: how does the very materiality of Al-driven image production-its inherent instability and "noise" —reconfigure youth aesthetic preferences and, more profoundly, their existential sensibilities towards selfhood and community? By analyzing these glitches not as bugs but as features, this research posits "trash" as a critical lens through which to examine the formation of identity within the algorithmic milieu.