Glitched Perceptions began from Malzahn’s earlier experience in data recovery and file repair. Using hex-editing tools associated with that technical background, the series treats the photograph not as a stable window onto reality, but as a fragile data object that can be opened, rewritten, damaged, and reassembled.
Bias written into the file
The images chosen for the series depict subjects that often carry strong and conflicting social opinions. Guns, religious symbols, vaccines, and video games were selected because each can trigger immediate reactions before the viewer has fully considered the photograph itself.
For each image, Malzahn gathered fragments of public arguments surrounding the subject. Those phrases were inserted directly into the image file’s hexadecimal code, allowing the discourse around the subject to physically corrupt the structure of the digital photograph.
The resulting distortion becomes both technical and conceptual: the image is damaged by the same field of opinion, conflict, and bias that shapes how the subject is interpreted socially.
Process
The works were made through a deliberately hybrid process. The source photographs were first altered at the level of code, using hex editing to introduce textual material into the image data itself. This connects the series to Malzahn’s technical history with recovering damaged files and repairing corrupted media.
After the files were glitched, the specific subject of each image was isolated and recomposited in Photoshop into the unglitched setting. This created a tension between photographic legibility and data damage: the subject appears both present and disturbed, as if cultural opinion has been embedded into its visual structure.
Perception as reconstruction
The series asks whether an image is ever seen neutrally. Each subject arrives with a field of prior beliefs, associations, and emotional positions. The digital glitch becomes a model for that perceptual interference: not simply a visual effect, but a material analogy for how interpretation can distort evidence.
In this sense, Glitched Perceptions anticipates later works in Malzahn’s practice that examine surveillance, propaganda, misinformation, and machine vision. The project begins with corrupted files, but its larger concern is the instability of seeing itself.