Hello, my name is Phillip McConnell. I am a 32-year-old glitch artist/poet/writer (screenplays and novels). While I am multi-disciplined the main concentration of my work is the visual art form known as Glitch Art. Glitch Art is the aesthetic of digital errors, created by corrupting the raw data and code of pictures. To create my work, I convert picture files into text files using a basic program called Notepad ++. Using the text file within the program I manually manipulate the data of the picture by adding or subtracting color codes and by taking pieces of other pictures and blending them with each other. Once I have distorted an image enough, I combine them using the notepad program and export the text file as a JPG picture file and print it on galley-wrapped canvas.
To do this I use various coding languages and techniques. Within this medium of art, my entire process centers around finding the flaws in images and making them beautiful. I Work with errors in images that may otherwise be disregarded but through Glitch Art I can bring out their aesthetic potential. As a creative, it’s important to speak to and highlight aspects of being creative that get overlooked for the sake of pure perfection. This mindset stems from my everyday life and bleeds into my artwork.
As a black creative discussing anything other than trauma or the mainstream aspects of the black experience is often dismissed or you are asked to create something within that realm. My work is meant to be an expression of my experience as a creative who is black. While some of my work discusses race, it’s more nuanced than that. With my poetry and visual art, I speak to aspects of philosophy, therapy, emotional intelligence, and different themes of my overall place in the world. My work has always been my voice to show others my worldview whenever I’ve been told not to share how I think or what I think. With everything I create; I seek to be that for those who don’t have the right words to convey how they feel or how they see things. I want them to look at something I’ve created and see themselves in it.