Glitch is an interactive and experiential exhibit, and process of capturing imagery for later artistic manipulation, that focuses on the distortion of the user. Offering an exploration into the imperceivable systems that control and power the digital world that we so willingly trust.

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Glitch

The development of Glitch places emphasis on the user, yet also on the viewing of the user through the distortion of a programmed "slitscan" image; the imagery being displayed directly to the canvas and recorded without knowledge from the user.


It is by distorting the viewer, that I hope to challenge the emotional and cognitive story that the user decodes and encodes, as visual information is being processed. Ultimately, yielding a critique of the limited ability for the user to alter how the user directly views them-self through the canvas; a canvas that has been programmed to distort, change, and power the way that we interpret framed and formulated visual information. Even information that we socially accept and are willing to trust and conform to, while not knowing where or what that information is going to be used for.


I also wish to invoke in the user and audience a sense of introspective questioning for how we develop such a passive trust in the handling, collection and use of information and data.


I chose to display this programmed canvas as a interactive piece within another art gallery, creating an almost “meta” partition between two competing art exhibits that most people had no idea were occurring. Therefore, as users passed and observed, they were unwillingly partaking in an exhibit that was recording, distorting, and capturing images of themselves for my own later manipulation and databending.


Development

The development of this program was created with JavaScript and the p5.js library. Development of code was inspired by Daniel Shiffman's Processing tutorials and other contributors. The automated script was written with AppleScript and run with the native ScriptEditor.


The user was allowed to either capture an image of themself and their distored canvas, saving that image to the downloads folder. Yet unbenowst to the user, there was also a programmed script running in the background that automated the capture of the screen every 16 seconds, saving those screen captures to another folder for later viewing. This automated script was left running for the entire duration of the gallery exhibit and yeilded quite surreal imagery. In total, there were over 700 frames captured and saved for later viewing and digital manipulation.


After the exhibit, the second creation of databending and digital manipulation had to take place. Samples of the captured imagery were sampled and rendered in Adobe Photoshop for digital manipulation and blending. Once those image files had been saved, they were then digitally corrupted and altered by adding and deleting hex code, converting file types, and destorying parts of the file. Once satisfied with the corrupted and distorted imagery, those file were brought back into Adobe Photoshop and physically manipulated even further; creating a unique blend of human digital alteration and entrirely random digital corruption. A paradigm between the creation and distortion of people's own visual imagery and my own, and computer's later corruption.


Future Goals

My next goal for Glitch is to print these digitally caputered and manipulated images for different physical mediums and materials in order to showcase to the audience the imagery that was captured, leaving the audience questioning how they view themselves and the juxtapostion of what they see versus that of the machine; ultimately presenting a system of viewing a designed visual story that people are willing to trust and surrender to.

Updated: June 2018