“We would now call this glitch art, or culture hacking.”

— Rhea Myers —

PostScript Viruses exploited a strategic point for critical intervention in the smooth circulation of the signs of the mass media via printing technology.

In the mid-1990s, printing used the “PostScript” programming language to turn page descriptions into ink or toner on paper. Text and images all represented as files of computer code. A computer virus that redefined how this code worked could copy itself into these files and then infect other files to spread itself across the Internet and sneakernet. By doing so it could make strange the smooth signs that circulated in mass media, which was also a key strategy of net.art. Both the glitch payload body and a sketch of the virus header were produced, but they were not combined for safety reasons. The payload was however used to corrupt example files to print and display.

The image you see here has been generated by infecting a PostScript file of the kind available in 1995 with the virus body (with one contemporary bug fix) then printing the results.