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Further experimentation with Data Moshing.

Data Mosh 3 from Richard Almond on Vimeo.

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I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, after first seeing the Evident Utensil Video, but have just recently found the time to experiment. ‘Data Moshing’ is basically warping video so that during each cut, the pixels from one scene sort of blend into the movement of the next scene. Fairly hard to describe really, best to take a look for yourself. How it all works is through the way videos are compressed. There are two types of frame in a compressed video, one records the pixels of that particular piece of the video (‘P’ frame), and the other records the movement (‘I’ frame). Generally each new cut scene in a video generates a new ‘I’ frame, as usually most of the pixels between scenes will be different. However, if you remove those ‘I’ frames, the transition between scenes blends into a sort of digital mayhem.

Here is my very first effort at Data Moshing. Thought I’d keep it topical.

Britain’s Got Moshed from Richard Almond on Vimeo.

My first attempt at Data Moshing. Thought I’d keep it topical…

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Attempts to introduce a form of ‘digital decay’ into a series of images by directly, destructively manipulating the ASCII/HEX code in TextEdit and HexEdit. Got some lovely effects. Of course I saved a copy of them all first….

Click to see the full Flickr set

Initial effects achieved by editing a JPEG in a simple text editor. Results are initially subtle but the horizontal linear structure of the image code is obvious. Shifting lines of code in the text editor shifts the corresponding lines of pixels in the image, pretty predictable. Shifting larger blocks of text shifts larger bands of pixels, deleting blocks creates the grey bands. A little time however and some interesting effects can begin to take shape. Editing edited code proves to be successful, and editing the edited edited code further more. I’m looking into a way of automating this process…

Exploring the same process in HexEdit, an application for the easy viewing and manipulation of HEX and ASCII code. Initial results seem similar to those previous, if a lot more colourful. Replacing characters in the code seems to shift the hue of bands of pixels, the images becoming truly ‘glitched’. The ‘find and replace’ tool proves very useful for quickly and easily replacing certain characters with others. A good 5 minutes of this code mashing and the image becomes virtually unrecognizable from its original format…

Now using TIFFs rather than JPEGs and the effects are quite different. The lack of compression means the code is structured differently, and shifting characters now changes the position and colour of larger boxes of pixels, rather than the thin bands typical of a JPEG. The effect is overall more subtle. To the point where it can be hard to decipher upon first glance than an image has been glitched at all, even though it is significantly different to its original.

Attempts to Experimenting with two images at once, one taken recently by myself and the other an excellent old tintype of these gents in their new car from Bodie Bailey.

The process consisted of glitching both images separately to a point of suitable decay, opening them as layers in Photoshop, applying a blend mode, flattening and further glitching the resulting image. An attempt is made at linking poetic, human memory to its digital equivalence.

The interest is in creating a digital form of human memory. Computers remember ones and zeros, whereas we remember emotions, feelings, smells, sounds and sights. We have sudden flashbacks where our senses take us to a past time. Most of the time we have little control over when we experience these memories.

What would happen if this was replicated in the digital world? If when you took a new image with your digital camera, every so often a trace of a previous photograph would appear, randomly…

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I’ve decided to look into the concept of ‘Digital Decay’ as my thesis project. We are all aware of physical decay as it effects every aspect of of lives – our cars break down, our shoes get holes, the paint on our walls flakes. But living in the post-digital revolution as we now are, we must consider decay in the digital sense. What will eventually happen to all this data we save, burn and store?

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