#digital glitch

20 years ago, in March 2005, Nine Inch Nails' "The Hand That Feeds" music video premiered, the first music video I directed. To celebrate the anniversary, I have constructed this immersive 2005 simulator to transport you to an authentic media viewing experience of the distant past.

“The Hand That Feeds” was the first single off of With Teeth, NIN's first new album in five years, and first of the new millennium. The album and this video will always be special to me as it was the first album I art directed end-to-end, creating all of the album art and visuals surrounding the era, which included bringing the aesthetic into this music video and the production of NIN’s 2005/2006 tours. The lofi digital glitch look was something yet unseen in popular culture, as in 2005 digital media was still fairly new / rapidly evolving and the general professional approach was to showcase the latest crisp clean “perfect” technical abilities. By choosing to use technology the “wrong” way and make the texture of its flaws central to my art, I gave NIN a new visual identity for the new millennium and began a glitch art journey that defines my career to this day.

Happy 20th, old friend.

It was supposed to be a simple job. Get in, get a sample, get out, don't get caught. You didn't expect there to be a kid, locked up in a room like a mouse in a box. She says the corpos stole her away from her parents and stuck her full of needles. Now she's in your arms, hands over her ears while the alarm blares, and security drones are blocking your every exit. What do you do?

Digital Glitch is a new, cyberpunk setting for Protect the Child. It includes 7 pre-written characters, all members of a group of cyber-runners, criminals who go on high-stakes jobs to rob the mega-corporations called zaibatsus in order to keep themselves alive. Unfortunately, the lab they were attempting to rob also happened to hold a girl, whose genetic code has gave her super-senses and a hyper-sensitive nervous system after IrisLabs tried a new experimental procedure.

You need the rules for Protect the Child in order to be able to play this game, but right now, since PtC is in playtesting, the rules are free!! Currently downloading the game gives you access to a Google Sheets play-kit. There is also a pdf in the works to be released at a later date.

This play-set was designed for both the Kiwi Jam 2024, and the Dice Exploder Pregen Jam. It's list of inspirations include Hamixh Cameron's The Sprawl, Cory Doctorow's Unauthorized Bread, and ZebraMatt's 24XX Dire Pulse. It contains themes of Infertility, Exploitation, Police Violence, Capitalism, Disability, and Medical Horror.

Glitch on Glitch, Chama, NM, 2025

It was so much fun. January has been a great month for being genuinely delighted by gameplay. Pasion de las Pasiones was sheer joyous fun that I hadn't felt playing ttrpg for quite a while. Today's Digital Glitch session, while dramatic, recaptured similar feelings. How many games see a tween girl break your tenancy agreement by throwing a toaster at a billboard?? How many games have mechanical ways for you to sit with that same girl and help her work through complex feelings?

I really enjoyed playing the Hearth-Heart, Salvation. That playbook is the kind of character I'm readily drawn to, but I also considered Penance the Rogue-Renegade. I like a character with a bit of a dark past who is trying to do better.