Persons of Note - Glitch Art

As a way of distorting images and so in a way 'reality', I was playing around a bit with changing the coding on images on my Mac, deleting part, copying and pasting others and adding entirely new characters in too. It seems to depend on the picture of to what actually changes on it and to what degree, but it was interesting to mess about with.

I was just using an image I found of some marionettes Jarry used in some of his earlier plays, I believe from when he was in high school. For some reason, the only thing that seemed to change with these was the grey strips shooting across from the right, and as seen on the top image, areas where the pixels have been removed completely. There doesn't seem to be much logic to the actual process of changing the code, other than the further up the code you are reflects what will change in the image, i.e. if the top of the code is changed, then the top of the image with therefore also be changed. But it's this fact that makes it so appealing and fun, there is zero way to control what you are doing and it's great.

It was exciting, the randomness and unpredictability of it; you cannot see how the image will be altered until you exit the code, and then sometimes too much has been changed and the file corrupts warranting you to start again. There is also an interesting relationship between the digital means in which to change the images, and the equally distorted imagery of Jarry's words. It is taking a modern process, very digital and scientific, as a way of exploring imagery about a 1800's philosophy/science which is possibly the opposite to digital in it's fluidity, but somewhat similar in it's randomness.