Free Thinking

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: The Glitch

The Glitch

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, The Glitch

Novelist Tom McCarthy joins Matthew Sweet to explore glitches and what they tell us.

Matthew Sweet investigates what we learn about a system when we examine how it fails, with novelist Tom McCarthy, two artists and a philosopher.

One definition of a glitch is a short-lived fault in a system operating otherwise as it should. Glitches in digital systems have been used by artists for at least a decade to produce work with a characteristic aesthetic, that invite reflection on the computer systems that play an ever bigger part in our lives. Matthew Sweet talks to the artists and theorist of glitches Rosa Menkman and Antonio Roberts about the glitch as a meeting point between technology and aesthetics.  Alongside them is the novelist Tom McCarthy, whose new novel The Making of Incarnation features the work of the psychologist and industrial engineer Lilian Gilbreth (1878-1972). She developed a series of time-and-motion studies which aimed to improve the organisation of factory production lines, and ultimately arrive at the one most efficient way of doing everything. And completing the line up is the philosopher Hugo Drochon, who's investigated conspiracy theories and the role glitches play for people who follow them.  

The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy is published in September 2021. 
Antonio Roberts' website is https://www.hellocatfood.com/
Rosa Menkman's is http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com/ 

Producer: Luke Mulhall 

Image: I Disappear, 2015
Credit: Antonio Roberts 

You can find Tom McCarthy in a Free Thinking conversation about the "experimentalism" of Alain Robbe Grillet https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xr4m
and he talks about a previous novel Satin Island in this episode with Anne McElvoy  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054t24q
You might also be interested in  a discussion about skeuomorphs with Will Self in the playlist exploring Visual Art on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002skk

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

The Glitch

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3