Based on the inspiration from Russell, I have redefined the impression of glitching I used to carry. To me, a glitch used to reflect negative emotions and a feeling of frustration, but after exposing myself to new perspectives, I see the beauty in the “problem”. A glitch challenges the status quo and embraces abstractedness in order to redefine boundaries that may encircle “normalness”. Russell applies this theory to conversation regarding online digital culture, the body, and marginalized groups in the US. With that being said, I pulled three images from the internet that embody these main areas of interest.
The first image that I chose to manipulate was a picture of a surveillance camera in the real world. In an interview with Russell, she was asked to comment on the level of security the online world encompasses, and if she ever gets nervous about privacy issues when expressing herself through a digital platform (Davis, 2020). I loved her response. Russell said that online worlds are, in fact, dangerous. The same goes for the life offline, though. People often do not feel safe walking home, getting into taxis, and meeting strangers because we live in a dangerous society where the unexpected tragedy is somewhat expected. In order to depict the relationship between privacy and danger online and offline, I decided to layer a “digital” glitch over a “real-life” image. This shows that surveillance is an issue in both settings, not just one.
The second theme I wanted to comment on for this project was Russell’s idea of the body being a construct human created (Russell, 2013). When I think of constructs, I usually think of social constructs that are intangible, like religion for instance. Russell argues that the perception of the body is extremely diverse, and people can understand / study it in infinite ways, making it a construct. To represent this idea visually, I decided to take an image of the human body stripped of any key identifiers and apply a dramatic glitch effect. In particular, the image that I was working with was the muscular frame of a human body. The neck down of the body was more heavily glitched (done on purpose!) and the head and neck were clearer. I did this to show that perception of the body is all in the mind. It is not really about what the body looks like and how it functions in actuality, it’s about what a culture may view it as, or its about what particular value it holds to an individual.
For my last image, I wanted to reference Russell’s childhood and experiences she had in New York City that sparked her motivation for her manifesto. More particularly, I wanted to address recent social movements that may have changed NYC for children who are growing up there right now (Zeynep, 2014). The Black Lives Matter movement has recently prompted a large conversation for black marginalized people in the US. People have expressed their opinions and anger through protests, literature, education, and most notably in the context of this assignment, art. Art has been incredibly powerful during this movement, so I decided to take an image of the side walk paintings outside of the trump tower as a base for my final glitch. Glitching this image did not change the intention of its use, rather it shows that art on the street is also just as important as digital art. So many digital artists have created such beautiful pieces regarding the BLM movement that have been shared over millions and millions of accounts. I wonder if these conversations and shared efforts of change create a different environment for children growing up in New York City today.
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