tag: Databending

On 29th February I’ll be leading the workshop at Maker Monday at Birmingham Open Media.

Glitch Art describes the process of misusing and reappropriating hardware and software to make visual art. In this part theory, part practice workshop we will consider ways in commonly used programs can be misused to interpret various data in different ways.

For the practical part of the workshop you’ll need a laptop/computer (Mac/Windows/Linux) with the following software installed:

AlphabeNt, the book which I wrote the foreword for and spoke briefly about at GLI.TC/H 2112, is out now for either $30AUD or $70AUD (special edition)

AlphabeNt: Experiments from A–Z presents the 26 characters of the Latin alphabet as you haven’t seen them before: broken, distorted and aesthetically corrupted using digitally destructive techniques not usually found in the designers handbook. Co-authors Drew Taylor and Daniel Purvis created the characters using audio editing software such as Audacity, using standard text editors, by overloading flatbed document scanners, shaking iPhones and kicking computer tables.

By now we’ve all seen so many jpg and bmp glitches that they’ve almost become just another effect. Unfortunately, due to the limited amount of image file formats there are only a finite number of ways to exploit them.

Extrafile, by Kim Asendorf, is a great response to this. The application allows one to convert standard image formats to ones that he has created (4bc, bascii, blinx, cci, mcf, uspec, xff), each with their own properties that sets them apart from standard image formats.

For the What is Your Glitch? videos I wanted to build up on some of the extensive work that has already gone into the documentation, deconstruction and glitching of file formats. Rosa Menkman has already done a great job of documenting some of the more well-known file format glitches in the Vernacular of File Formats, which I recommend you all read. For this exercise I wanted to explore some of the more obscure file formats. Using open source software and Ubuntu has given me access to a wealth of programs that can still generate obscure file formats, such as pcx, pix and sgi. Through these experiments I also found inconsistencies in the way that different programs generate files, which is evident through my decision to use GIMP to convert files rather than Imagemagick in some of the scripts. Enough chit-chat, download the scripts!

A series of videos exploring the types of glitches and compression artefacts available from different image and video file formats.

Making Dataface was really quite an exciting journey. What started off as an attempt to make a typeface inspired by glitch art turned out to be a story of collaboration, exploration and hours of research. Here, I will go through my process.

As you may have seen from my previous experiments in vector databending it’s totally possible to manipulate vector files. My original method for creating Dataface was to save each glyph in the Liberation font to an SVG file and then go through the process of glitching it for each file. Obviously this would’ve taken me a long time, hence why there was very little activity between my original announcement in January and when I started work on it again a few weeks ago.

Since I was introduced glitch art last May I’ve really been hooked on exploring this technique and how it can affect my artwork. One thing that I’ve never done is to explain why I do this, so here it goes!

For me glitch art is about exploring the boundaries in which things will operate as expected, with particular emphasis on computers. Computers are very complex and can take years to understand understand. Computers are also very obedient. They will do what you tell them to, but you have to tell them in a way that they understand. For example, it is assumed that if you double-click on an image it will open in an image viewer or editor. This is because the image has data in it (the header data) describing what kind of file it is and when you double-click on it an instruction is sent to open that kind of file with any program that can interpret it that data.

After months of hard work I’m happy to finally release Dataface

Special thanks go to various hackers at fizzPOP for all of their help, GB for programming help and Scribbleboy for general guidance. You can view of preview of the font here on Flickr.

There will soon be a lovely writeup of how it was done and the tools to use to create your own. Until then, I hope you enjoy Dataface!

Dataface is coming along rather nicely!

It looks different from my previous updates as I’m using a different method for glitching the typeface. This may change yet again if a script that I’m working on decides to work.

On 8th April I took a self-prescribed zine making day. Ever since the Gallery Of Owls meetup last year I’ve been increasingly interested in zines as a means of communication and the DIY scene as a whole. After many failed ideas I finally settled on showing the journey of a pixel and how it can be mutated through different ways of manipulating it, specifically through glitch art.

What is presented is the simple manipulation of the cover image over twelve pages. In my never-ending quest to explore glitch art off the screen, what then intrigued me was how I could print this. I then had the idea to print these images onto of printed material. In this way we see how glitches can alter our perception of already existing media. Does it add to or detract from the original intent or is it even noticeable? To pay homage to zine culture I’ve use pages from some of the zines that I’ve collected over the years as well as found papers that have been clogging up my inbox.

Badges from my video are now available from the Created in Birmingham shop!

This marks somewhat of a new shift for me as it’s the second time that I’ve taken glitch off the screen and into a more physical form. I do like that when I sent the images to print I received this e-mail:

Thank you for our order from —.

Just wanted to double check your artwork - the five files we’ve got are different colours of large pixel-style blocks, is this correct? Just wanted to ensure the files have come through to us correctly.

As readers of my blog will know by now you can easily import any data into audacity and play it as audio. However, most data that you’ll import and then play will just turn out as noise. That is simply because there’s too much noise in the image i.e. too many colours and too much data. So, if you reduce the amount of colours and data in theory you get something a little bit more pleasing to the ear. Experimentationing time!

On Thursday 4th March I took part in the AntsArtJam at BitJam in Stoke-on-Trent. Three canvases were set up on the stage and artists were invited to get creative on them as the night went on.

Those who know me will know that live art is not something that I’ve really done before. I’ve done a fair bit of performing, but nothing like this, so it was quite an exciting challenge.

You may remember from my earlier blog post that I’ve been working on a databent typeface. It was mentioned a fair while back now, but I have been doing bits of work on it every now and then. Here’s a bit of my progress so far:

Ass you can see some of the characters are more recognisable than others. In fact, looking at it again I can’t really remember what some of them were. As I’m planning on having most characters mapped out, in upper and lower case, progress will be a bit slow, so I’ll aim for April for a completed font.

On Thursday 4th February I was Stoke-on-Trent for BitJam. I still don’t have anything ready to show on stage but thought I’d use the night as a testing ground for some of my ideas. I wanted to investigate ways in which to interpret what was happening around me. The main performance of the night was from a chap called Arctic Sunrise

For my first test I fired up Alchemy and attempted to draw the music. Alchemy fortunately has a few tools that can make your sketches react to sounds. They are Create > Mic Shapes and Affect > Mic Expand. Here’s the result of using both of them together

Myself and Mez recently finished a script called Echobender that automatically databends images.

To use it you’ll need:

• A computer with Linux installed. I don’t have a Windows or Mac PC so I can’t test it on those
• Sox. On Ubuntu you can install it via sudo apt-get install sox
• Convert, which is part of ImageMagick. On Ubuntu you can install it via sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Once you have those installed just execute ./echobender.sh from the terminal and then drop a .jpg or .bmp file into it. The output will be in a folder called “echo”.

One of my overall goals is to find a way to databend live video. I’m sure there’s a way to do it with Processing and PureData but I’m not yet proficient in those programs so they’re out of the question for now. In the meantime I thought to try and hack the Echobender script to databend my webcam images.

tonyg provides a great tutorial on how to convert live webcam images into audio, which I’ve used as a starting point for my hack.

I’m not sure why, but I’ve never had business cards…. until now (sorta). I’ve just finished designing these eight:

As expected databending played a big part in their creation as did a bit of post processing. Time to get them printed!

I was speaking with Jon earlier about my work and he’s noted that a lot of it has been text based and then asked if I was working towards making a typeface in the same style. I must admit, my recent text based work has mostly been an excuse to use the awesome Kawoszeh typeface, but I feel he’s onto something.

Whilst I’m quite far from a complete typeface I’ve been doing a few experiments:

Using the same svg glitching techniques that I’ve come to love, today, with the help of Twitter folk, I created this rather short animation that compliments my new deviantART ID

My initial aim was glitch the video file itself but then I figured it’d be quite different to glitch each frame individually. To do this I created the original text in Inkscape and then created 52 copies of it. I then opened up the file in a text editor and began messing around with the numbers!

You may have noticed that in my previous post there was a nice little image of the Bull Ring Bull. I did that! Before I go on, it’s not an image that will be used for Birmingham’s City of Culture bid (though if you really like it monies plz). It’s more an image just to represent the work that we’re doing to collect opinions of Birmingham.

Although not a completely original concept (Andy Warhol anyone?) I have utilised a few newly found techniques to create it. Whilst the results, and indeed databending as a whole looks cool I have yet to use it in any real world situations. Until now that is.

Thanks to some help on the Audacity forum I finally know out how to use Audacity to databend. Previously I’d been using mhWavEdit, which has its limitations and just doesn’t feel as familiar as Audacity. From talk on the various databending discussion boards I found that people would often use tools like Cool Edit/Adobe Audition for their bends. Being on Linux and restricting myself to things that run natively (i.e. not under Wine) presented a new challenge. Part of my task was to replicate the methods others have found but under Linux. My ongoing quest is to find things that only Linux can do, which I’m sure I’ll find when I eventually figure out how to pipe data through one program into another!

I made this video at a training day in using Macs/video editing software with children and community groups. I completed the task as asked but then switched to my laptop, fired up kdenlive and tried to see what it was capable of. It was upon exporting to ogg that I got a nice surprise.

Whilst this kind of glitch is rather nice one must be careful not to be reliant on it for production as at any time it could be fixed. Effects such as this Photoshop truncating glitch are now only possible in Photoshop 6 as the bug that caused it has been fixed. This is why I’m now more on the lookout for programs/scripts and guaranteed methods for reproducing glitch effects. The ones that tend to be best at this are ones that can import any data, an example of this being Audacity’s ability to attempt to load any file you load into it.

I’ve been exploring databending for awhile now and whilst I quite like it I do wonder where it can go next, or rather, where I can take it next. Whilst I like the chaos and apparent random results achieved in opening up an image file in a hex/text editor and mucking around I feel that more could be done with the result. I feel that the modified image (or sound) should part of a design, not the design itself. With that in mind I’ve been doing an experiment mixing the chaotic but more controlled output of Alchemy and several modified images

Awhile back I did a quick vector illustration of a penguin. It was nothing much really but as far as penguins go I quite liked this one. Recently (as in, the last four months) I’ve been interested in databending. Have you ever had an image you’ve taken come out like it’s been through a shredder? That’s the effect that most databenders are after. In a way it’s like trying to reproduce an error. Once you’ve done it a few times you get to learn what effects different methods can produce but even then it’s very unpredictable. For a short tutorial on databending an image, take a look at the one I wrote for fizzPOP.