A Collective Glitch

— 30” x 20” Archival Prints on Metal —

The Collective Glitch (2015-2018) examines the idea of utilizing imagery as data. This work looks at what would a collective of photographs conveying the same descriptor look like when collected, deconstructed into vertical strips of information, and then woven together like the making of a tapestry?

For the past three years, I have been exploring what makes a memory--what is a personal memory versus what is a created memory influenced by images or media provided from outside sources. I searched for a collective of individuals from all over the United States, whose ages spanned over multiple generations, and were from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds to collaborate with me on this project. Once found, I requested ten images from “the collective”. Some were images they personally photographed, some were images they pulled off the internet, and some were from personal family archives, however, all the images were personal and intimate to them.

I utilize a vertical version of Morse code to digitally weave the multiple data sources (the 15 photos from different people representing the same word) together to create a single, compressed image. Ultimately, I am interested if once combined, does the information from all 15 images create something recognizable to that of the word originally given to the collective.

The Collective Glitch invites the viewer to consider imagery as data, draw upon their own cultural experiences to define the visual data being presented to them, and ask the question, in today’s society, is this what portrait/family/home/hero/tragedy/fear looks like?