Datamosh and other visual glitches

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I've always been fascinated by unwanted visual artefacts that gives a special kind of effect (similar to lens flares and X-shaped light-glow from stars and lamps in the streets).

It's typically associated with VLC having issues reading a file

That Youtube channel talks about visual gliches on purpose used for his indie game

 

[Den MDM Den MDM]

Hm... Instead of X-Shaped I had visual glitches running GTA IV which made a diagonal line of green and red (CHRISTMAS) star-shaped artifacts on the screen. Guess u would find pleasure in seeing them lmao

 

[Parasite_Steve]

I enjoy glitches of any kind and I use them a lot in my art and especially my music. I find this back and forth between artists and engineers kind of funny, because stuff like glitches, artifacts and distortions are something engineers try to avoid at all costs but artists just latch onto it. The history of distorted guitars in rock music is a good example of this. Amps were specifically designed to not make those sounds and soon it became an industry to build amps that make more of it. The fact we can now buy glitch plugins for all kinds of visual and/or audio software is an interesting parallel to that.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I enjoy glitches of any kind and I use them a lot in my art and especially my music. I find this back and forth between artists and engineers kind of funny, because stuff like glitches, artifacts and distortions are something engineers try to avoid at all costs but artists just latch onto it. The history of distorted guitars in rock music is a good example of this. Amps were specifically designed to not make those sounds and soon it became an industry to build amps that make more of it. The fact we can now buy glitch plugins for all kinds of visual and/or audio software is an interesting parallel to that.

Speaking of music I remember this video talking about that typical 80's drum effect that was born from an unintended feature of an amp (aka a sound glitch)

Speaking back to visuals: J.J. Abrahams is very fan of adding back lens flare in the movies despite being a flaw from the lens that got fixed.

We could derail the topic further into the "artistic flaws" of many things where an unintended feature becomes the standard for something even after fixing it.

We can even talk about real life "glitches" like the Purkinje Effect basically making the night naturally blue to us despite that the moon merely reflects the bright white sun so it would normally look orange-ish but our eyes are made to notice blue in semi-darkness first.

 

[7eve70rd]

I've always been fascinated by unwanted visual artefacts that gives a special kind of effect (similar to lens flares and X-shaped light-glow from stars and lamps in the streets).

It's typically associated with VLC having issues reading a file
View attachment 28352

That Youtube channel talks about visual gliches on purpose used for his indie game

These corrupt video file glitches are interesting. Digital files are supposed to be perfect and not degrade like an overplayed VHS tape left on a hot carseat.

The transmission of a video stream can be appear moshed and it gives a feeling of being in an altered state of consciousness.

 

[Parasite_Steve]

These corrupt video file glitches are interesting. Digital files are supposed to be perfect and not degrade like an overplayed VHS tape left on a hot carseat.

The transmission of a video stream can be appear moshed and it gives a feeling of being in an altered state of consciousness.

The glitches in video files aren’t necessarily due to any errors or degradation in the files themselves although bit rot is a genuine concern and digital files are generally a lot more volatile than most people think.
The glitches and mistakes are due to the fact that the videos are usually encoded with a lot of compression to keep file size manageable. When you play an mp4 video your player literally guesses part of the frames or even entire frames. Depending on how much compression was used errors are more or less likely to occur. If you have a dvd or bluray you don’t have that problem. Funny enough a well-mastered dvd can look better than a smaller sized full-hd mp4 because bandwidth often trumps resolution.