These projects are all about entangled relationship of process and technique in the production of glitch art. On the one hand, glitch art is very process oriented, but that doesn't mean that the process follows from a concept. In order to come to an understanding of how concept and process relate to one another in glitch art, an understanding of the materials and techniques or manipulating those materials must develop.

That said, take this project to be a glitch journals, sketchbook, or diary or sorts. Explore different file formats, manipulations, combinations of changes here. Develop your techniques and discover new processes. Share your steps and the outcomes. To give you an idea, I'll be posting some examples here. Most recent examples will be up top and older exeriments will be pushed down.

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Macroblocks 2

I used GIMP's RGB Noise filter, blurred it with a Gaussian Blur filter, then exported it as a JPG using the default settins on 50% quality.

I then databent the file by performing a find and replace operation, then extracted a sequence of macroblocks and animated them in GIMP:

Examples Examples - image 1 - student project

Animation

Examples Examples - image 2 - student project

Databent using find and replace Hex 12 with Hex 17

Examples Examples - image 3 - student project

Blurred Noise, originally 192x192px

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Macroblocks

JPG compression takes the image data and breaks it down into 8x8 pixel tiles called macroblocks. The features of these tiles, changes in chroma (color) and luma (brightness), are then represented or encoded by a set of variables to be decoded by equations in an algorithm runningin the image viewing program.

When you databend a JPG, you're inserting extaneous, "junk" data that gets fed through those equations. This is why the resulting artifacts take the form of strange 8x8.

These images can become interesting minimalist compositions, when enlarged.

Here are some gradient glitches from glitched gradients.

Examples Examples - image 4 - student project

Examples Examples - image 5 - student project

Examples Examples - image 6 - student project

Examples Examples - image 7 - student project

To scale up images without having the pixels smoothed, you can use the resampling method "nearest neighbor" in Photoshop or "interpolation: none" in GIMP.

Examples Examples - image 8 - student project

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Exeriments in Databending a GIF (Not Animated)

Examples Examples - image 9 - student project 1. Created a Gradient in GIMP in a 500x500px project. Export settings to GIF were default (no interlacing). Did not index colors prior to exporting.

Examples Examples - image 10 - student project

2. Opened up in Hex Fiend and used the find and replace in Hex Mode. Tried replacing FF with various values. Changed file name to indicate the changes. Example_FF_F8.GIF means that I found and replaced all instances of FF with F8 (hex mode).

Examples Examples - image 11 - student project

3. The above image was produced by opening Example_FF_DD.GIF in GIMP, rotating counter-clockwise, then exporting to GIF but this time using the interlaced mode. I then did a find an replace, converting all hex values FF to F1. The resulting filename is Example_FF_DD_RL_i_FF_F1.GIF. What you're seeing is an export to a JPG. I also exported to TIFF for my archives.

Examples Examples - image 12 - student project

4. The file name of this image is:

Example_FF_DD_RL_i_FF_F1_RR_FF_DD_F7_FF_VF_FB_DB_RL_i_FF_D8.GIF

Here's the recipe decoded from the file name:

find and replace hex FF with DD
Rotate Left (CCW), export as interlaced [hence the i]
find and replace hex FF with F1
Rotate Right (CQ), export as non-interlaced
find and replace hex FF with DD (again)
export as non-interlaced
find and replace hex F7 with FF
vertical flip, export as non-interlaced
find and replace hex FB with DB
Rotate Left (CCW), export as interlaced
find and replace hex FF with D8

Keep in mind that these changes worked for me because I was exporting with each iteration to a new GIF using GIMP. Doing the same thing with a different editor and different file format would yield completely different results!

FYI - Just to give you an idea of just how much trial and error can be involved, here is a screenshot of the folder containing the files created just in making this part of the example!

Examples Examples - image 13 - student project

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Phillip Stearns

Creator: Year of the Glitch + Glitch Textiles

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