“It’s the glitches and twists, I thought, that make this universe unique and compelling. Without flaws, there would be no depth, no substance.”
(Amanda McRaney Jenkins in a YA novel about a demon possessing a teenage boy.)
This is my homage to @la__flaneuse_ brought to you by a glitched-out Olympus digicam I have also found. Is there something about this brand that makes their entropy more inevitable? And what is this particular kind of glitching called, anyway?
This is a Stylus 790 SW from 2007. The “SW” refers to “Shockproof + Waterproof,” which is an ironic claim given its current state, but the camera certainly feels solidly constructed. All metal, chucky hinges on everything, 3x optical zoom but with no lens extension to protect the water seal, etc.
A rugged exterior housing a haunted soul.
I’m sure you can relate. You remember 2007. It’s a millennial metaphor.
The first slide shows you the “standard” resolution on this camera by default (640 x 480). The rest is the “Super High Quality” of 3072 x 2034. I took these to see if any of the glitches replicate the same way and I guess the answer is sorta but not really? Very small changes in the image seem to trigger different reactions in the sensor.
Anyway, this gave me NIN Year Zero vibes:
“And the sky is filled with light
Do you see it?
All the black is really white
If you believe it
And the longing that you feel
You know none of this is real
You will find a better place
In this twilight.”
Like some kind of senile state, there are brief moments of what looks like clarity with this camera, particularly when it’s zoomed in a bit and you hold it real steady for a couple of beats. It’s like it has to squint and really think about what it’s looking at, otherwise it’ll hallucinate.
But no matter what you do, there’s no hiding its personality. It is what it is. This is how it deals with things now. This is how it copes. I’m sure you can relate with that too.
“You know what I see? The aesthetic of a world I live in every day. Rust. Wear. And folks trying to fix what’s broken.” (Richey Piiparinen on ‘ruin porn.’)