False Narratives and Cropping Your Life
My intention with this glitch art is to get the audience to think about the ways in which technology and especially the rise of social media alters the way in which we view ourselves and those around us. We curate which pieces of ourselves we wish for others to see. We create false narratives to spin for others and the rosiest filters through which to view the small nuggets of truth we do embed in these narratives. By overly distorting an image which was already highly designed in its framing and lighting I wished to call attention to the distorted pictures of our own lives we post to social media sites for others to see. An un-glitched image posted to social media is just as artificial as the glitched version I have created in Decim8.
Both images are inherently unreal interpretations of real life.
Additionally, I have glitched a side by side comparison of my own personal Instagram and ‘Finstagram’. ‘Finstagrams’ are commonly used as an outlet through which to show your unedited self to your closest friends. This does not cause a decrease in the degree to which each post is artificial. These posts and images are still designed, framed, cropped to fit a distinct narrative that the author wants to convey. I often found in my own experience with my own accounts that I was automatically self-editing out the daily struggles that I do not want to publicize. Despite the fact that over the past month most of my mental energy has been spent dealing with my own personal commitment issues, that is not something I ever posted about on either my public account or on my private one. I cropped my own life so that it looked less damaged and less real, so that I could maintain my ‘image’ in my friends’ minds.
In that way, my private and public accounts are still incredibly similar and intensely toxic. Social media and the mindset surrounding our technology continue to do harm to our society’s’ culture. We all search to exude and attain the ‘perfect’ life. We desire the biggest vacations, the best cars, the best jobs not so that we ourselves can enjoy them but so that we can show all of our followers that we are successful. We are constantly seeking the approval of others instead of actually enjoying our lives. We project this artificial life not for our own enjoyment, but for the approval of others. We spend so much time creating these false narratives and images we cannot truly enjoy what we do have, since it is not that perfect story we want everyone to like.
