Bit Rot

Bit Rot is a result of observations of the drastic changes that have occurred due to the current digital age, a time that is proving to be a pivotal period in civilization’s history and a distinct moment in human evolution. My process for producing the imagery in this series begins with manipulating digital photographic files, with the use of a hex editing software, of various landscapes by adding sections from Wikipedia entries about the respective landscape into the binary code of each file. The information code that composes each photographic element as a result is corrupted and creates broken and unpredictable imagery with drastic shifts in color, which is both representational of the original landscape and drastically different. These images, with their chaotic and segmented nature, symbolically depicts the effect and consequences the digital age has on the lives and environment of society in a cognitive, social and emotional way. Dependency on new technology and an unfathomably large environment that is constantly growing and changing has quickly replaced much of the physical environment, in which society has previously operated and has left it in a state of vulnerability and constant tension. This catalyst of digital use has forced a new evolutionary change in civilization that has altered the perceptions of what the human environment is, thus bringing society one step further from nature and the origins, in which humans have evolved. The skewed landscape imagery is reminiscent of this drastic change in human evolution.