The original three images I chose to work with are still from a video game named Mass Effect Andromeda. Since this game got quite a bit of backlash since it was released in 2017, primarily about the facial animations, I kind of wanted to play off the backlash and glitch some of the images. With all three, I started by just taking out parts of the text and seeing what each change did. But once I spent more time with each one, I started to find which changes I liked the most. It just so happened that the main change for all three was making the image blocky, moving the image at first so that one side of the image found itself on the other end. I then found a way to move sections of the image to get it to the point of that you could still make out some aspects of the original, but the sections of the images were moved around so much that, in some cases, it was harder to determine the aspects of the image. With all three of these glitched images, I think back to Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism. Even though these may not be related to the Feminism aspect, there are parts of the text that I feel like relate to the work. Legacy wrote, “This search for our ‘own reflections’ - recognizing oneself within digital material and the electric black mirror that carries it - is bound up inextricably with a search for self-recognition away from the screen as well.” (Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russel, 27). This more relates to all three of the glitched images, not just one. At least for me, the glitched work that I’ve made is a bit of an extension of me, or maybe how I subconsciously think of myself. All three seem to be reflections of how I thought of myself as a kid. The glitched images feel like they’ve been pushed together without care and the being that made them didn’t care what it looked like. They may not look like other images, but there is a beauty among them. While looking at them, I feel like I can recognize the same things with the kid version of myself. Being a person with dyslexia and a stutter, as a kid I felt like I was given these things that make a person not function like everyone else, but I now see as beauty. On the same page, Legacy wrote, “Glitch manifests with such variance.” Even though the three glitched images have aspects that are similar, they are all different. And I feel like this quote can not only be said for these three, but for other glitched art. Each piece may have some aspects that are similar, but as a whole, is different from any other piece of glitch art that one can find.
