Silicon Ashes to Silicon Ashes, Digital Dust to Digital Dust: Chronolibido and Technological Fragility in GlitchHiker

In this chapter, media scholar Jakko Kemper examines GlitchHiker (2011), a Dutch video game that was effectively programmed to expire and is now no longer playable. The chapter focuses on GlitchHiker’s communication of its deteriorating health through the use of glitch aesthetics — a visual and aural form of aesthetics crafted from technological breakdown that has often been labeled in terms of imperfection. By linking the game’s glitch-based signification of technological finitude and fragility to Martin Hägglund’s concept of chronolibido and to Steven Jackson’s repair-and-maintenance paradigm, Kemper reveals how the game’s finite constitution fostered a sense of care and empathy in its audience. He concludes that GlitchHiker’s imperfection- and finitude-oriented ethos is indicative of potentially more sustainable and thoughtful modes of relating to technology. With this ethos, the makers provide a productive counterweight to Silicon Valley’s design philosophy of frictionlessness, according to which any emergent form of technological imperfection should be negated through commercial transactions in the form of updates or replacements.