jonCates
Overview
Jon Cates, known professionally and online as jonCates, stands as a pivotal figure in contemporary new media and glitch art. Based in Chicago, he has spent nearly two decades shaping the field through his dual roles as an artist and educator at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where he has served as Associate Professor and former Chair of the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department, as well as Chair of Faculty. His practice fuses theoretical inquiry with hands-on experimentation, positioning him at the heart of the “dirty new media” movement that celebrates technological imperfections as sites of creative and critical potential. Cates’s public persona radiates a playful yet incisive energy, evident in his X handle @joncates and ongoing calls to “get Glitch Spirit!” through platforms like glitch.school.[1]
Beyond academia, Cates catalyzes international communities around glitch aesthetics, organizing festivals, workshops, and DIY events that bridge institutional spaces with underground scenes. His work embodies a systems-oriented approach to art-making, viewing digital technologies as imperfect, noisy assemblages rather than pristine tools. This philosophy has helped establish Chicago as a birthplace of dirty new media practices, influencing generations of artists who embrace error, noise, and the poetic possibilities of broken systems.
Artistic Style & Medium
Cates’s artistic style is defined by its embrace of glitch, noise, and “dirty new media”—an aesthetic that foregrounds aberrations, raw imperfections, and the failures inherent in digital systems. He works across animated GIFs crafted from incongruous media fragments, language-based interventions reminiscent of cut-up techniques, hypnotic looping animations, and performative text actions that merge human speech with machine code. These pieces often appear raw and unpolished, rejecting corporate ideals of clean, seamless design in favor of punk-infused, pirate-media energy that revels in dirt, fetish, and unexpected breakdowns.[1]
His mediums span digital video, net art, installations, and online platforms, frequently incorporating open-source sharing and community-driven processes. Recent activity includes sharing glitch tutorials and GIF experiments on X and objkt.com, extending his practice into contemporary digital spaces while maintaining a commitment to surprise and the subversion of expectations. Cates treats glitch not merely as an effect but as a way of life—a performative, techno-social engagement that humanizes technology through its very flaws.
Influences & Themes
Cates draws deeply from avant-garde traditions, including William Burroughs’s cut-up methods, Dick Higgins’s intermedia concepts, and the noisy experiments of early net artists like Netochka Nezvanova. Noise music, experimental performance, and punk rock aesthetics further inform his approach, as does a humanist perspective that counters dystopian views of technology with playful, empowering reclamation of error. Themes of techno-social embeddedness recur throughout his oeuvre: technologies are never neutral but are performed in everyday life, embedded in complex, impure relationships that mirror our “wet” human existence.[1]
Central to his work is the idea of glitch as both critique and celebration—undermining normative expectations of digital perfection while fostering community, open-source sharing, and collective creativity. He explores the poetics of noise and aberration, questioning where the machine ends and the artist begins, and advocates for “rebugging” systems to reveal their thresholds. This framework positions glitch as an empowering, anti-individualist force that builds resilient artistic networks.
Notable Works & Exhibitions
Among Cates’s notable works are series such as “ANIMATED GIF SELF-PORTRAITS,” “CLUSTERFUCK ZOO,” and contributions to the ongoing GL1TCH.US project—an unstable book for unstable media featuring essays, archives, and collaborative experiments. His language actions and .gif animations have appeared in contexts ranging from Transfer Gallery in New York to international glitch festivals. He has been central to the GLI.TC/H festivals, which he helped spawn, alongside hactivist events and workshops that extend his practice into participatory formats.[1]
Exhibitions and presentations include panels at SXSW Interactive, contributions to Furtherfield, and features in Hyperallergic. More recently, Cates engages audiences through glitch.school resources, GIF Art Day celebrations, and objkt.com collections, continuing to disseminate techniques for creating glitch-based animated works. His academic roles have also led to curated programs and lectures that blur the lines between teaching, exhibition, and performance.
Impact & Recognition
Cates’s impact resonates through his role in establishing dirty new media as a recognized movement and Chicago as its nexus, inspiring international artists and collectives to explore glitch as both aesthetic and ethos. As a longtime educator and academic leader at SAIC, he has shaped curricula and mentored countless students in new media, film, video, animation, and art history, fostering shared governance and interdisciplinary approaches. His writings, interviews, and community initiatives have amplified discourse around noise, error, and the politics of digital imperfection.[1]
Recognition extends to features in prominent outlets like Hyperallergic, LinkedIn profiles highlighting his leadership, and ongoing social media presence that keeps glitch practices vibrant and accessible. By championing community over hyper-individualism and surprise over stylistic replication, Cates continues to influence the evolution of media art, ensuring that glitch remains a living, evolving force for creative resistance and joyful experimentation well into the digital age.