Apillify is an exploration of the fragility of the mind, a visceral confrontation with the chaotic ebb and flow of mental illness. The work uses scanography as its medium, employing the flatbed scanner not as a passive tool, but as an active participant in the process of transformation.
Pills — symbols of control and healing — are placed upon the scanner bed, moving slowly and erratically, dragged into a state of organic glitch. What begins as an orderly arrangement quickly fractures into a disorienting, abstract mass, each pill breaking apart or distorting in a way that mimics the fractured sense of self experienced in moments of mental turmoil.
The glitch is not a manufactured effect; it is a natural consequence of the act of scanning, of the physicality of the motion that disrupts the rigidity of the process. It reflects the organic chaos of the mind under pressure, where logic bends and clarity becomes fractured. There is no clean line between order and disorder, just the constant push and pull between control and chaos. The pills themselves — these tiny objects of supposed salvation — are shown not as symbols of peace but as reflections of the overwhelming burden they carry, their very presence both a solution and a reminder of how fragile that solution is.
In Apillify, the scanner becomes a lens into a state of mind that is not just disturbed but disintegrating — pills blur into each other, lines become squiggled, and form evaporates into abstraction. It’s a portrait of the struggle, not of one moment, but of the relentless tide of unmanageable thoughts, the sensation of drowning in your own mind. As each pill is subjected to the scanner’s light, its shape shifts, embodying the unpredictable journey of treatment and relapse, the frustration of feeling both bound to and liberated by these tiny capsules, these supposed lifelines.
The image itself, with its glitch-ridden composition, feels both urgent and tragic, as if the motion of the pills could spill into the viewer’s own sense of self. It’s not a quiet meditation on illness — it’s a scream, an overwhelming rush of sensory overload that mirrors the sensation of being out of control. The glitch is more than an aesthetic choice; it’s a representation of the violence that mental illness can do to the mind, the way it distorts, fractures, and ultimately reconfigures perception. The result is not something clean, not something easily digested — it’s an eruption of the inner landscape, a visual translation of the cacophony within.
In this piece, the struggle of the mind is laid bare, its complexity and instability turned into a living, breathing image. Apillify doesn’t just ask the viewer to witness mental illness; it demands that they experience it, feel its dissonance, its inability to remain stable, its relentless push against clarity. Through the scanner’s organic glitch, the piece recontextualizes the tools of recovery as both a means of survival and a manifestation of the constant, grinding fight to maintain some semblance of control over a mind that refuses to stay still.
