Project #1: Final

Project Statement

In this Digital Art project, I explore the chaotic beauty of glitches to examine themes of decay, nostalgia, and the visceral nature of memory through the lens of live-event recordings. Growing up in Chicago, a city with a rich radio heritage, I’ve always been captivated by the unpredictable static that emerges when tuning between AM/FM stations. These random, accidental sounds become unique auditory experiences, much like the visual distortions found in degraded VHS recordings. Whether it’s concert footage, artist interviews, or documentaries, these imperfections evoke a sense of time passing and the surreal, enduring resonance of these events.

This series of twelve glitch images transforms found stills from various live-event recordings into distorted-yet-intimate portrayals of the ephemeral nature of such moments. Employing abstraction as a primary tool, I used techniques like Audacity to corrupt digital image files, emphasizing the serendipity of using music software to glitch music-related images. Additionally, I experimented with Adobe's AI generative fill, content-aware fill, and various other digital tools, drawing out the decay inherent in re-uploaded and copied footage. The resulting abstractions create a strange, esoteric beauty that blurs the line between reality and memory, allowing the viewer to see these live events as fragmented, dreamlike experiences.

To complement the visual series, I included an introductory audio clip that captures the essence of radio static and channel surfing, bridging my personal connection to radio with the visual decay of the images. The project culminates in a two-minute video that integrates datamosh techniques, radio clips, and my own voiceover narrating a fictional broadcast within a digital cityscape I’ve created in Minecraft. By using painterly abstraction and embracing the flaws of decaying media, this project celebrates the unpredictable beauty of glitches, turning distortion into a lens for exploring the fleeting and enigmatic nature of life itself.

Part 1: Audio

Dream & Discovery / Hasty Deliverance / More Than Anything

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Part 2: Photo

Part 3: Video