V4 — ISSUE 01 — MOTION — FEATURE 001

METAPHYSICAL GLITCHES


A multi-format investigation of the moments when consciousness lags, loops, or throws an error.


YEAR              2024–2025
FORMAT            Animation, Interactive Web Work,
                  Printed Posters, 3D installation, Animated Posters
SOFTWARE          Adobe Creative Cloud, p5.js
PROCESS           Frame-by-frame animation, p5.js, 
                  digital collage & illustration, Blender 3D modeling, 
COURSE            Digital Prototyping, Research Analysis & Process
FACULTY           Mark Ramos, Veronica Lawlor
DEPARTMENT        Communications Design, Pratt Institute

V4



Beauty standards are an operating system. Gender is an interface. Reality has bugs. Metaphysical Glitches is a body of work that treats these errors as design elements — broken logic, doubled perspectives, the second-person narration you can't escape — and asks what they reveal about what we're avoiding, what we're evolving into, and how we process a reality that feels slightly out of sync.













CHAPTER I : SETTINGS FLUX

A short satirical animation about gender as a set of mystery dials.

The central narrative work. A character moves through a series of experiments with a set of unmarked dials that change their outward appearance — a satire of gender expression through fluidity and the blurring of binaries via fashion and visual representation. Built across three production layers: a hand-drawn protagonist, a 3D-modeled console, and a rendered environment. 




PLATE 01 — SETTINGS FLUX — ANIMATION (1:49)

The character cycles through a series of mystery dials, each toggle restyling them in real time. The animation refuses any stable identity for its protagonist; you watch them flip between presentations, never landing.


PLATE 02 — SETTINGS FLUX — ANIMATION STILLS







PLATE 03 — SETTINGS FLUX — 3D OBJECT MODEL






PLATE 04 — SETTINGS FLUX — 3D RENDERED ROOM







CHAPTER II : EVERY SCREEN IS WATCHING



A browser-based interactive poster. The viewer becomes the watched.


A browser-based interactive poster built in p5.js. The viewer enters a surveillance interface where they realize, slowly, that they are not the operator but the subject — the thing being watched. The piece argues that the act of looking at a screen has stopped being neutral, that every interface now contains the gaze it pretends to give you.



PLATE 01 — EVERY SCREEN IS WATCHING — INTERACTIVE, BROWSER-BASED

"Every Screen Is Watching" is an interactive surveillance critique disguised as a control room. The viewer becomes the subject — hovering over monitors wakes them, as if the machines noticed you first. Each screen runs a different data stream (noise, tracking logs, biometrics, an eye that follows your cursor) until you click one, revealing a message about how digital systems observe, record, and profile us without consen









CHAPTER III : HUMILITY IN STANDARDS

Posters and a script for the moments the operating system can't render.


The conceptual heart of the project. A poster series exploring metaphysical glitches — moments where your inner operating system lags, loops, or throws an error. Each poster takes one type of glitch and renders it visually. The chapter includes the original script written alongside the work: a second-person prose piece that names what the posters image.



PLATE 01 — HUMILITY IN STANDARDS — "MY DENTIST TOLD ME TO RELAX AND COUNT BACK FROM INFINITY"


PLATE 02 — HUMILITY IN STANDARDS — "SCHOOL SUSPENDS STUDENT IN TIME FOR A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE MISDEMEANORS"



PLATE 03 — HUMILITY IN STANDARDS — "YOU'RE STUCK IN THE 2ND PERSON AND YOU CAN'T GET OUT. HELP YOU. HELP YOU PLEASE."



PLATE 04 — HUMILITY IN STANDARDS — "ACCIDENTALLY BROKE THE 5TH WALL. NOW MY AUDIENCE IS AWARE THEY ARE ALSO FICTIONAL."



PLATE 05 — HUMILITY IN STANDARDS — "ACCIDENTALLY CANCELLED MY SUBSCRIPTION ON TIME. NOW EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING AT ONCE."





PLATE 06 — HUMILITY IN STANDARDS — "GUT FEELINGS ARE MEMORIES FROM THE FUTURE."







PLATE 07 — BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER — ANIMATED POSTER TRYPTYCH





PLATE 08 — HUMILITY IN STANDARDS — SCRIPT

Original second-person prose written alongside the poster series.

Page 1:
  1. A: (reading off a card, or off a big screen, or a small screen maybe, or a book) “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
  2. B: A statement so rarely said by the beautiful.
  3. A: It's completely subjective… entirely relative.
  4. B: You don't actually believe that, do you?
  5. A: I mean, I don't mind my looks but everyone has an ideal, even if it is arbitrary.
  6. B: But why not pick an arbitrary ideal that you align with? Just love yourself and be done with it. 
  7. A: It doesn't work like that. 
  8. B: How tragic.

◆

Page 2
  1. A: It can't work like that.. And besides, I'm not chasing vanity. I’m after ..self respect.
  2. B: And what's wrong with vanity?
  3. A: By definition, vanity is excessive. It's too much for the average person. 
  4. B: All the more for me, I suppose! Have fun with your “self respect” (mocking)
  5. A: Thanks. (deadpan).. I’m working on it.
  6. B: (almost cutting them off) and yet, it seems that the longer you stare at yourself, the more you chip away at it. 
  7. A: Knowing beauty is relative doesn’t mean I can change what I find beautiful.
  8. B: So the real question is, who decided what you find beautiful, if you didn’t choose it yourself?
  9. (long pause)


◆

Page 3
  1. A: Cultural norms, I suppose?
  2. B: Ah yes. Hollywood.
  3. A: (defensive) Everyone’s affected by them. 
  4. B: Yes and you don't quite have that “captain america,” “wonder woman body”, do you now? [a/n: choose based on the actor]
  5. A: I am lacking the syringes.
  6. B: Clever. So why do you think so few people seem happy with themselves?
  7. A: I suspect that’s by design. There’s profit in inventing insecurities, and selling the cure.
  8. B: Well, if you are so enlightened, why can’t you transcend it?
  9. A: I guess… I can’t bridge the gap between what I know to be true and what I feel.…and that’s frustrating. 
  10. B: I can't imagine otherwise

-- page break --

Page 4:
  1. A: But I think no one loves everything about their body all the time. Maybe recognizing that is part of learning acceptance.
  2. B: True. (pause) but that’s not the whole picture is it?
  3. A: What do you mean? 
  4. B: I'm not sure you really believe that beauty is subjective. 
  5. A: Of course it is! People disagree all the time about what constitutes what’s beautiful and what’s not. 
  6. B: That doesn’t mean there isn’t a right answer — a truth behind what’s truly beautiful.
  7. A: And what could be objectively beautiful?
  8. B: Oh come on. You know it in your soul. Strength is beautiful. Grace, vitality, health, resilience — all things that are desirable in themselves.

◆

Page 5:
  1. A: But by your logic of “opinions can be wrong,” even if everyone agreed on something universally beautiful, that wouldn’t make it true. 
  2. B: …
  3. A: Besides, ultimately, I don't even want to care about my looks, I want to care about my character. 
  4. B: And that’s exactly why you care about your looks.
  5. A: What?
  6. B: It's because of what you’re making them mean. 
  7. A: My looks don't mean anything. 
  8. B: yes but they do — at least to you. You believe your body, or the qualities you think it lacks, reveal flaws in your character.
  9. A: In what way could that even be true?
  10. B: Well, your main fear is lacking. So when you look into that mirror, you ask yourself, “why aren't I more?” and you say to yourself, that it’s because you're not disciplined enough or not tough enough, not graceful enough. Or maybe you're not smart enough, and you have to figure out how to better yourself. 

◆

Page 6:
  1. A: (clearly uncomfortable)
  2. B: and we can go further. Your dressing reveals your lack of taste, your skin reveals your lack of care, your posture- lack of esteem
  3. A: (straightens back in attempt to look tall again)
  4. B: in your mind, everything about what you lack is written all over your face, all over your body- and you don't like that. Your shortcomings are written all over your body… and you despise the evidence.

◆

Page 7:
  1. A: So if I was beautiful, then maybe it would mean that I wasn't lacking in those ways. 
  2. B: bingo!
  3. A: So what's the solution?
  4. [blackout]

◆









The error message is the work. There is no patch coming.

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V4 — ISSUE 01 — FEATURE 001 — METAPHYSICAL GLITCHES

DESIGNED & WRITTEN BY VIDYA NAMUDURI — 2025–2026

V4.DESIGN