For my glitch project, I was inspired by the concept of a “glitch in the matrix”. It’s an experience for which you have no explanation for. Specifically, I was interested in how the movie series “The Matrix” portrayed this experience. The film depicted a dystopian future where reality was a simulation created by machines, which overtook humans. When the matrix made changes a déjà vu would occur and hence the “glitch”. Taking that idea of living in a simulation, I created my glitch-a-like. I used a picture of my sister when she was five years old and wrote a computer program to glitch it. I chose this picture because it symbolises the innocence and purity associated with a child and I wanted to obtain the viewer’s attention to it. It led me to this existential idea that my sister and all my surroundings may be artificial and I have no way of knowing if it’s the truth or not.
The program I made consisted of taking an image and manipulating the pixels through various transformations, which allowed me to datamosh the image and create a glitch-a-like. The user needs to start with an image in portable pixmap format (PPM), this allows the pixels in the files to be read. I started off coding three main functions, which were transpose, vertical flip and grayscale. Transpose would transpose the image along the major diagonal, vertical flip will flip the image vertically and grayscale will average the pixels to create a grayscaled image. Once these functions were working correctly, I began to make changes in the way they were handing the rgb values of the pixels. In vertical flip, I rearranged the rgb values for the bottom row of pixels after the flip. Whereas in grayscale, I arranged it such that the r value was the sum of itself and the b value and swapped the b and g values. These changes were not immediate, I experimented with many different pixel arrangements until I was satisfied with the output. The output was created by altering the number of times I called each function. This creates a recursive process where the previously changed pixels are changed again. If done numerous time, it produces interesting results.
In Rosa Menkman’s paper she perfectly summarizes the role of the machine in a glitch. She states, “Rather than creating the illusion of a transparent interface to information, the machine reveals itself...the machine reminds the user of its existence”. Despite this work not being a pure-glitch, I aspired to remind viewers of the computer’s existence. Thus, It was also very important that I code my own program. It illustrates how a program can easily manipulate an image of supposed reality. It is important to note that although I wrote this program and provided it commands, I lacked the control on the aesthetic of it, specifically how the pixel's new rgb values would impact the output, showcasing that ultimately the computer has a lot of power on it’s on.
This project has no title as I wanted the viewers to bring their own interpretation to it.
Source:
Menkman, Rosa. The Use of Artifacts as Critical Media Aesthetics. N.d. University of Amsterdam.
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