Final Work - ‘Reality’Â
The word glitch refers to an unpredictable irregularity in a system—digital and analogue alike. Explore the creative possibilities of glitch.
Following on from my first assessment task, where I looked at the way a physical glitch works within today’s. I used several ideas from this, however I ultimately choose to delve down a completely opposite path as I felt that is what would allow me to discover more about glitch. This second assessment task, through practice led research lead me to delve into the relationship between the online social media world and the offline everyday worlds.
It is proven that individuals project different personas depending on their online and offline worlds, whilst even differing these personas depending on which social media technology is used. Therefore, through this task I have presented a ‘glitch’ to be something that is an human error, that error being individuals having a front stage (online world) and back stage (real world), whereby they present to the world what they wish to.  This creates a huge problem within society as individuals are able to create a false presentation of self, in order to heighten their social status. Therefore, I choose to uncover this idea and thus, showcase to the world what individuals do.
I gained Inspiration from Amalia Ulman’s 2014 work Excellences and Perfection, whereby she explored the blurred lines between personality and performance, between life and lifestyle, thus provoking a consumerist fantasy lifestyle, that so many 21st Century individuals can so easily relate to.
I liked the idea that for many social media is seen as a medium by which their lifestyles become a commodity, a way of buildings ones brand. The idea, that you can edit posts, delete posts and choose which images and posts are to be seen on your feed or wall, showcases the power of social media. Social media is so powerful that individuals are able to create curated narratives of their life, narratives that they are the author and editor of. However, through my artwork, I wanted to unpack the idea that even though individuals can create a false presentation of self, other users are still able to see past this idea. Thus, every textual medium goes through the process of interpellation, where a intended meaning is taken out. For example, in my images I was happy, cool, popular. Through this process of interpellation, individuals like myself encode these texts to create these outcomes. However, this then leaves the audience to actively decode the message of the text, this leaves other user to gather the deeper unintended meaning – which is usually the reality behind the text.
Art Critic Brian Droitcour has revealed the rebalancing of a texts power – the ‘’aestheticization of everyday life in social media… has leeched the authority of image-making from mass media and from art’’. Thus this has given any individual no matter who they are to be the curator  of their own published narrative.
Through my 6 images, I have unpacked common ideologies surrounding the use of social media on 3 distinct platforms – Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. These 3 social media technologies all have different social standards surrounding uploading, Instagram is formal, however a very pretty version of self, Facebook is very formal, however very fake, whereas Snapchat is informal due to its ephemeral nature, further it is used with closer ties. This lead me to show the contrast between these perfect social media posts and the mathematical code which creates these images. I have chosen for all of my social media posts to look 99% as if they were real, however there are somethings that aren’t quite right or that are outdated, showcasing that all theses forms of social media experience glitches. Furthermore I have shown both the encoded and decoded meanings of these posts through textual coding. These script codes are attempting to replicate the ‘textedit’ that is behind a image file, being layed out in the same format, However showcasing bold words, that show these encoded and decoded messages.
baratheonpilled
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
origamiaround
jbbartram-illu