Glitch Western Wednesday, 20250604
THIS Glitch Western Wednesday im followingUp on my Midjourney Monday Machine Learning && ꜩezos ꜩuesday posts to share behind the scenes on my artistic process, as i create my most recent Glitch Art, “eternalEcho” for the inaugural Eternity exhibition of Et3rna Gallery on objkt, the largest platform for Digital Art on Tezos.
Tezos, the blockchain itself, recently featured us (the exhibition && me as an invited artist) which is awesum because i hope more people can be introduced to Digital Art && Glitch Art. as we welcome folks inn, today, i’ll reveal Secrets of Glitch, so you too can understand my Glitch Western && how i make it haunted by the eternal echos of frontier technologies
i prompted for an ‘infinity symbol Möbius strip’ in Midjourney version 7
with the following parameters: chaos 100; stylize 0; and weird 3000. from the outputs the image above was, to my mind, at the time, the strongest
from that image i returned to the concept of an Old West gun. at this point it could have been either a pistol / six shooter or a shotgun / rifle / long gun. from the initial concept until now, the barrel should be bent into an infinity symbol Möbius strip and/or two guns of a similar make && model should be aimed at one another to produce the affect, the feeling, of a showdown which is itself caught inn a loop. mayhaps magic bullets float in between the guns or a single magic bullet is suspended in mid flight as if shot by both guns simultaneously, then trapped in a state of conflict. magic bullets have the magical ability to hit their targets, but what if the target is the bullet itself? or, what if two magic bullets are both tasked with the mission of hitting one another? these kinds of encodings would cause loops
this image emerged out of these considerations && Midjourney’s image editing features. keeping the ‘infinity symbol Möbius strip image (above), from my prompt for an ‘Old West revolver’ with the stylize parameter now at 450, i pushed the system to imagine that this was part of the gun.
Midjourney took an oblique approach here by deconstructing the gun, breaking the six shooter down into its component parts: barrel, Frame Window, Cylinder, etc. of course, since this an AI / ML system the image is not technically accurate. the scale && structure of the gun is hallucinated, /imagine’d, but Midjourney’s intent is clear. the black reflective metal infinity symbol Möbius strip is now serving as part of the frame of the gun. still, the gun is incomplete. this incompleteness echoes glitch && glitches, suggesting a broken or exploded diagram of the ‘gun as machine’ which definitely appeals to me && my Glitch Western sensibilities
with the ‘Old West revolver ’image above as an image prompt, i added the original concept back in as text by prompting for an ‘infinity symbol is the old west revolver has a barrel which is bent in the shape of a Möbius strip shooting magicbullets into itself’ to arrive at this new raw AI output which i knew i could vary a bit to find a better gun:
i did find a better gun through variations, which i then flipped the orientation of:
variations can be a very slow process, alternating between ‘subtle’ && ‘strong’ options, reviewing outputs, potentially editting the images and/or the prompts, submitting those requests again, repeating that process iteratively over && over. this editted screenshot from my Midjourney account gives a sense of the process:
through these variations i also found this beautiful pistol:
&& with this raw AI Art output above i saw this pistol ‘breaking’ or‘coming apart’ across infinity symbolized as a Möbius strip looping through day && nighttime skies. i could also see what the barrel would become: a locomotive steam engine! as i have previously explored in my Glitch Western Art work Glitch Western icons — jonCates (2025) for the POP ART exhibition by GIF-GALLERY curated by ｔｉｅｇｅｎｈｏｆ
the idea in my Glitch Western icons artwork above is that you will see connection between the gun && the train as the barrel of the gun becomes the locomotive steam engine && the train becomes both the gun (or the machinic extension of the gun) && the bullet. whereas in this process, to create eternalEcho — jonCates (2025), the gun && the train are meant to be more simultaneously existing, like quantum states. is this a train or a gun in the loop? is the train traveling in the loop like a magic bullet? are they, gun && train, just probabilities, probable expressions of machine logics (how they operate on us) possibly forever, looping, overlapping, in both literal visual superimposition && as in reference to quantum mechanics
there is a beautiful way in which the train engine glitches, tipping && teetering off the tracks of the railway as if falling but always already caught in the loop which moves infinitely sideways. as with my earlier Glitch Art work above, the graphic match (as its called in Cinema Studies) of the black smoke will soon become gunsmoke, once i superimpose the pistols into this artwork:
now you can see each step of the superimpositions above so that you can identify each unique element of the artwork, from the infinity symbol Möbius strip to the guns to the train(s). each puzzlepiece comes together, ontop of each other (superimposition) so that the artwork becomes all of them at once
so far my artistic process is AI Art && Photographic (because these kinds of superimpositions actually come from the hystories of Photography && Cinema) so turning towards Glitch Art, i transformed this image recursively processing the image by glitching it with a pretty heavy-handed app on Android called “Glitch!” the app includes a few very old-school style ‘Glitch Art Affects’ (yes i know, affects means feelings && effects is what you would expect i should say, however, i define Glitch Art as the Art of Surprise which means we are searching for a feeling, an experience of glitch that is made possible by, while also going beyond, Glitch Aesthetics).
once glitched i begin to experiment with animating the sequence to create an Animated GIF. this is slow process of making GIFs, changing their frames, and/or frame orders, framerates, playback speeds, etc. during this phase i have to watch these loops repeatedly, like repeat-viewing of a film, to find what is working for me && what needs to change. as we say in Art, i have to sit with the work, in order to hear what the work wants or needs from me, as its creator, as the artist. that makes me hungry. so while i watch these loops i ate a hamburger at one of my favorite places here in Taipei, capital city of the nation of Taiwan:
the final steps i took to create my new Glitch Western Animated GIF involved adding more glitches, making more subtle changes in Photoshop, and a few compression tricks. those steps will stay mysterious for now, like the secret sauce in the burger above, my artistic process has a few ingredients that aren’t written in the recipe. it takes a special touch && sum seasonings from this old Glitch Western cowpoke to cookUp an Animated GIF Glitch Art wit just the right amounts of grit && gliterr ;)
eternalEcho — jonCates (2025)
shoot thru you ➝
eternally Glitch Western goldN’Guns breakLoop alwaysAlready ON trainEngine railwaytime burning
▲▇▆▅▄▃▂▁▂▃★
WHILE: Deleuzian eternalReturn equals instantiation inn my Glitch Western worldviewww
LOOP: we embrace glitches, Glitch Actual, the ways in which systems surprise
EQUALS: virtual ⇄ actual ⇆ Glitch ⇅ Art
TRUE: approaching infinity inn flames
ECHO: [ELEC。TRIC。I。TY]
★▃▂▁▂▃▄▅▆▇▲
Animated GIF
5 colors
4 frames
169.5K
“Eternity brings together a collection of digital art that explores the idea of timelessness and what lasts beyond the moment. In a world that’s constantly changing, what does it mean for something to truly endure? This exhibit invites you to think about eternity through the lens of art and technology, where the digital realm opens up new possibilities for what can last. The works in Eternity reflect on the ways we capture meaning in a world defined by change — some exploring the fleeting nature of moments, others imagining visions that could endure far beyond the present. Each piece serves as a reminder that while time moves forward, art has the power to transcend it, offering a glimpse into something lasting. Through this exhibit, you’re invited to consider how digital art can survive, evolve, and continue to resonate long after the screen goes dark.” — Lex Doom
Doom.eco Digital Art ecosystem founded by Lex Doom (2025)
