DATA MOSHING & GLITCH ART

Posted on Aug 11, 2012

A few months back my good friend Will introduced me to Glitch Art. and ever since then I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into the digital roots of this medium. I thought I’d share the results and techniques with you.

What is it Glitch Art?
Wikipedia puts it nicely ‘Glitch art is the aestheticization of digital or analog errors, such as artifacts and other “bugs”, by either corrupting digital code/data or by physically manipulating electronic devices‘. Still confused? Let me try and explain how to hack photos.

Rename your JPG as .txt – sample.jpg will become sample.txt.
Then open the file in a rich text based application – Textedit for mac and wordpad for Windows. I’m using ImageGlitch from the apps store with has the benefits of a real time preview of the image.

Hack the code by chopping large chunks out, adding characters, and copy paste new sections in. Save the file and rename it back to a JPG. Open it up and see the corruption.

Original File. Two old dears, going about their own business on Coney Island Beach.

Corruption 1

Corruption 2

Corruption 3

Corruption 4 – Destroyed

You don’t have to stop at photos, hack any digital content. Music can be rewired. Rename .MP3 into .RAW and then open in Photoshop to get a image representation of the code.

Taylor Swift – Love Story. Looks better than it sounds, doesn’t it?

And so, I made a little movie incorporating some of these techniques. To get full effect; Watch in HD, switch full screen and turn up your speakers.
WARNING: Flashing lights and images. Images and words containing a strong reference to sex and violence. Please do not watch if Bambi makes you cry.

Neon.Glitch
The daily onslaught of media fear, government propaganda, sex and violence that prays on our subconscious mind.

A project comprising of 624 corrupted images edited together with words subliminally sown in amongst the chaos.