Beautiful Mistakes
The purpose of this assignment was to focus on how technology fails us and I admit technology failed me. My first attempt at creating glitch art was a sad one. I tried using multiple sources but none were providing me with outcomes I was expecting. This is when I stopped trying too hard to make something beautiful and rather just let the ‘errors’ be just that, errors. Which was partly the meaning behind my art. My art was an ode to how we all try so hard to be beautiful, to make things beautiful, to feel beautiful, but many times the errors in those attempts can be just as beautiful.
None of the photos that I glitched turned out the way I wanted them or expected them to. This lack of certainty makes the art that much more interesting because you just let this machine create and destroy the photo without giving it direction or some sense of purpose, it just does it. Most other forms of art are very controlled and precise with a clear meaning or purpose. Glitch art allows you to take those very purposeful pieces and break them, creating something entirely different.
Unlike other times when technology fails you without your permission, creating glitch art allowed me to be in control of those mistakes. Although you give up some sort of control on how the image will turn out, it is also empowering to know that you are aware and giving permission for those ‘glitches’ to happen. We sometimes just have to let things happen and see the results as they come.
The process for making the glitch art is much more meaningful to my creation than the actual images. I took these photos because I thought that the scenes were so beautiful and worth being photographed. I spend a lot of time taking the perfect picture with the perfect lighting, scene, background etc. and I end up looking at the results and the image no longer holds the same qualities as its original beauty. Other times I have taken photos on accident or without thinking about it and they have turned out incredibly beautiful even without the preciseness that my other photos comprised.
In today’s society we spend so much time trying to be perfect and begin to lose the original sense of beauty and the beautiful mistakes that the world offers. These images gives a perspective that sometimes we just have to let those mistakes happen and allow them to create beautiful images on their own.
This experiment with technological failure gives incite to how technology is used to control so much in our world to alter and change things and when it malfunctions, it’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes there is just something beautiful about mistakes.
