So often in photography, we seek technical perfection over the actual output. It’s easy to obsess over the ideal camera settings, the sharpest lens, and the newest camera body. While fun and enjoyable in its own right, it's often really nice and rewarding to move away from that — to re-examine what makes a “perfect” image and challenge what a photograph “should be.”

In this workshop, we will shift away from the technical protection that we so often seek in photography and push our images beyond the normal bounds of editing utilizing databending. In databending, instead of editing the pixels of the images, you edit the code that makes it up, remixing and mashing it together in new ways creating entirely unique compositions.

We will explore how to do this utilizing programs like Audacity, note pad, and various hex editors, and how we can expand this even beyond photography into the realm of video and digital art.

During the workshop, participants will have the opportunity to view Leni Mae Wiegand’s exhibition, The Whole Preposterous Ideology, on view in Aurora’s Efroymson Gallery through July 18. Many works in the exhibition incorporate the use of databending, providing excellent examples of the process for consideration during the workshop.

Leni Mae Wiegand is a transfeminine lens-based artist. She received her MFA in Photography from Indiana University Bloomington in 2025 and her BA in Business Management from Benedictine University in 2022, along with their AAS in Photography from the College of DuPage in 2020.

For more information and to register, please click here or visit auroraphoto.org/workshops.