Glitch Art - I l*(e you - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Glitch Art - I l*(e you

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

I couldn't find another thread about this here, but on the off chance there is, I'm sorry. I wanted to make a thread to discuss glitch art and the techniques for creating it.

Glitches can be seen in our daily lives and generally they're an unwanted or unexpected bug or reaction from some form of technology. From digital billboards, the occasional graphic artifacts on a digital tv, video game bugs or even strange sound distortions the technology we surround ourselves is often just as flawed as we are.

Glitch art is defined as, "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."

An explanation on how to make some basic glitch art as well as a much better description of the artform can be found in this video here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr0yiOyvas4

There are various techniques in glitch art. An artist named Phillip K Stearns recently started a kickstarter (it's over, sorry. I'm only going to link it to showcase the artist's technique.) which showcased how he made glitch art photographs by physically manipulating parts of a circuit board and then taking the image to make a tangible form of the art as a textile blanket. I think they're quite stunning. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phillipstearns/glitch-textiles .

Glitch Safari is a group created by Jeff Donaldson that you can find here on vimeo. http://vimeo.com/groups/glitchsafari They try to capture footage of and celebrate the glitches you'll find in your day to day lives.

Some musicians use a technique called circuitbending where they also manipulate circuitry to get an effect, often random and unparalleled in it's sound. I'm not a musician so rather than murder this definition and get some raging at me about what circuit bending is or isn't, I'll just let someone else step in with a better explanation.

Here are a few pics of glitch art I created just today using the simple process of taking:
1) opening jpgs with notepad++
2) deleting random bits of data, or copy/pasting more, or writing random words in
3) saving after each change and checking the thumbnail to see the changes.
4) if the image doesn't load, control z (undoing)

As suggested by the_lion there's a lot of ways to do animated glitches in after effects:

http://aescripts.com/data-glitch/
http://www.creativedojo.net/glitch-effect/

There's probably a million tutorials/ways to do this, these are just two i thought of off the top of my head. If you have access to After Effects please god check these out and post your creations. I love to see glitched video clips.

Although I like the randomness to some glitch art and the level of chance, which sort of gives it a Dada feel to me, many artists try to replicate or simulate glitches in their creations.

Edit: I probably should have said that those last two creations were from Ian Brooks (I believe).

Zip fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Sep 28, 2012

# ¿ Sep 27, 2012 05:51

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 03:20

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Oh and making glitch art is _really_ fun for some reason so if anyone gets any images using the technique explained here, please share it.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2012 06:20

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

BaconBits posted:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/glitch-faces-gifs.php?page=1

I haven't tried animated gifs yet. Any idea how they got these effects?

Also Nihilistic fish, that color dog is amazing. Reminds me of old bbs ansi screens.

I think you'll like these. I took this image my g/f took of me goofing around at the mall.

and made this

Then I took an old television test screen and created this:

I really like it... I made it my desktop pattern.

Finally I took doctored a photo of a friend of mine who's also a DJ and I think I made the music come alive.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 07:39

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

the_lion posted:

Maybe you can add it to the op, but there's a lot of ways to do animated glitches in after effects:

http://aescripts.com/data-glitch/
http://www.creativedojo.net/glitch-effect/

There's probably a million tutorials/ways to do this, these are just two i thought of off the top of my head.

Is after effects worth it for a complete amateur in video editing? Or is there a much cheaper solution?
Sort of off topic sorry.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 22:14

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

I think DuChamp would approve of this.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 22:20

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

BaconBits posted:

You gave me the idea to do this:

also putting glitches in political art feels like it makes a bigger statement... I dunno.

(If I posted this on facebook someone would rage.)

Edit: Also I tried to do this to a Romney jpg I took off his website and.. holy hell I couldn't get the god drat thing to glitch at all.. also there was weird webcode in the middle of it (CONSPIRACY!)

Zip fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Sep 29, 2012

# ¿ Sep 29, 2012 09:03

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

How are you doing that to an animated gif.. because everytime I try all I seem to do is get a gif that won't load and I _really_ want to glitch animated gifs.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2012 09:06

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

I have way too much fun with this...

For this weird echo/ghost image effect I found out if you copy a part of data and just past it immediately after it right next to the actual data, it often ghost images and offsets the second. It's a really cool effect and pretty easy to do.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 10:49

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

The way I do it is edit the jpg with notepad ++ then scroll down past the first paragraph of data (editing here will usually crap out everything or occasionally give you cool color effects) then either delete a character or copy paste something or return randomly (really anything here) then control s to save and view the thumbnail or preview to see what's different. If I hate the change or it breaks it, control z to undo and control s to save. It's quick and easy to thumb through effects and avoid issues this way. Often ill just set the preview of the jpg right next to the notepad++ window while editing it so I don't even need to fumble around minimizing.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2012 01:35

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Somehow triple posted wtf iPhone SA app?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2012 01:36

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Oh god I got the best effect today. I was reading up on how to do this effect
http://www.hellocatfood.com/2009/11/16/databending-using-audacity/
I found this tutorial... it took a few attempts with audacity and .bmp files...
You have to import the bmp into audacity as import:raw and change encoding to U-Law or A-Law.

Then when you edit the image, click select whatever part of the data (for the first part just select almost the whole thing... DONT select the first part because you'll gently caress with the header and as usual the image will go to poo poo) now select an effect (ECHO LOOKS loving AMAZING).

When you go to save the file, do "export" select options and pick whichever choice you made earlier, u-law or a-law. Add the same .bmp extension and it'll warn you blah blah youve hosed up a file.

Then it should save with some weird effects.... it took me 2 or 3 tries to perfect this but you get some KILLER effects like this.

Also I found a whole slew of glitch art tutorials at:
http://gli.tc/h/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorials
and glitch software at:
http://gli.tc/h/wiki/index.php/Glitch_Software

# ¿ Oct 11, 2012 05:16

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Oh god... I did something really weird here. I think through glitch art I may have debunked an old ghost image.

Here is an old image of the brown lady.

So I was screwing around with converting the image to sound and doing different effects.....

That was kind of cool so I tried another effect.

Wtf... did she vanish? She's loving gone.
It took me a few seconds to realize that the center of the steps are just worn where people walk and probably reflecting things funny because of that and the way the camera was angled.... and her image looks like it's just reflected off the worn parts of the stairs where people toes and boots would have brushed up against the steps...

# ¿ Oct 11, 2012 06:17

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

I glitched the Matrix.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2012 06:52

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

I don't know what technique you were using but sometimes if you're copying and pasting data after it to get that weird overlay effect I got earlier, I noticed that occasionally it seems like the image just locks and no amount of editing gets it to change effect.

I thought maybe I was the only one this was happening too. (I also thought I was losing my mind because I was removing whole chunks of data and getting no effect when viewing the image).

# ¿ Oct 12, 2012 09:42

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Oh ya I don't use gimp. Hm.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2012 04:14

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

BaconBits posted:

oh god I laughed pretty hard at this.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2012 11:32

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Ularg posted:

I was seeing what more I could do and got this:

I went to see if I could make the edges of the image darker to focus on the center, and I placed the light behind the image and this immediately interested me.

I think the unintended is better than the intended when it comes to this.

Hey you figured it out! And these are pretty decent too!

# ¿ Oct 13, 2012 12:19

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

what filters did you use to get that effect?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2012 20:44

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

that donkey kong one is so good. what effect was that?

# ¿ Oct 18, 2012 04:07

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

I really have no idea where else to post this on SA... I found some interesting glitch art on this guys web comix kickstarter page but...

What the gently caress is this kickstarter about? I understand none of this and I've watched it twice and tried reading through his details.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/438226191/tempest?ref=home_location

# ¿ Nov 18, 2012 06:57

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

drat good first try man. That's pretty spectacular

# ¿ Dec 12, 2012 03:48

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Cozy Hemp Mines posted:

Yes, but to what end? What is the meaning of these uncorrected errors? Can you explain to me why this is Art, but an actual, "spontaneous" corrupted image would not be?

Wasn't paying attention to my thread and then this happens.

The Dada movement in 1916 demonstrated through readymades and randomness that art could be found in anything. If anything the randomness of glitch art is re-enforcing this point made a century ago.

Also I love glitch art and there's an ethereal quality to all of the images shared here.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2013 06:16

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Wolfgang Pauli posted:

Grabbed the first GIF I saw on reddit to start tinkering. I think it worked out pretty well.

I couldn't get anything out of animated gifs.. Every time I try it just blacks out. After about a hundred attempts I finally gave up altogether.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2013 06:18

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

weirdspaceships posted:

hahahah glitched titantic is a cool effect and also I could see myself using that image randomly.

and to the guy with the clockwork orange screencaps... any idea how to replicate that effect? It's like looking through strange glass windows of some kind. I'm rather fond of it

# ¿ Feb 5, 2013 19:07

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

space invaders

# ¿ Feb 5, 2013 19:41

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

here was the original animation:
(which is already glitch art sort of)

and here's what I managed to do:

I really kind of suck with animated gifs.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2013 19:56

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

the_lion posted:

What is the top image from? (These are kinda cool, which is why i ask)

No idea. I googled animated Gifs and it pulled up those Atari space invaders in some weird street scene. I don't even know the site anymore sorry

# ¿ Feb 13, 2013 07:34

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

McKilligan posted:

The first thing I did was saturate it a little bit. Then I derezzed it by zooming out and screencapping, and saved it as a bitmap

Your images are great but I swear if you stuck Chun Li and Guile in this picture, we would be staring at a street fighter level.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2013 00:02

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

itsnick posted:

Thought I'd give this a go...this is random extrusion and stuff on layers Photoshop

Holy poo poo dude this image is going to haunt my dreams. This is so creepy cool.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2013 00:04

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Wheany posted:

And here I added echo to the a and b channels. It is a lot more subtle effect because our eyes are far more sensitive to differences in lightness (luma) than color (chroma).

This is pretty cool man.

Also I'm pretty happy my thread on glitch art won't die. I haven't made much lately for some odd reason but at least there's a huge amount of stuff here.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 02:24

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

ekuNNN posted:

I've been making a little program in Max/MSP for glitching images, and I think it's beginning to produce some interesting things:

Original:

I love this one... SUDDENLY a cartoon dog.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 05:15

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

the_lion posted:

I could stare at this all day.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2014 00:51

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

Wheany posted:

If you liquid rescale the same images and then reconstruct the animation, you get this:

The first two gifs have 338 frames, the last two have 169.

holy poo poo dude.

I really need to learn how to glitch animated gifs.... The last time I tried I wasted like a full day and did literally nothing... each time I tried it would just turn flat black and sit there.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2014 05:31

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

sigma 6 posted:

Glitch art = THIS

Holy gently caress sigma... What did you just find?

I've watched it three times and each time it gets better.

# ¿ May 14, 2014 05:38

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

I sort of feel I should share this with the thread: I've been working on something glitchy and kind of a tribute to this thread as well.

Although I really love glitch art, I'm much better at writing. I previewed this character's power at the end of my first book (slightly) but purposefully left the mystery on it. I'm working on my second book now with this character with a strange powerset: the power to glitch reality.

The way I'm describing it is she can randomly flip switches on reality to shift things around and generate weird (often explosive) results. Sometimes it'll warp and reality directly around the event will just fall apart in strange ways.

This is actually going to let me tear down the fourth wall (or at least press the reader up against it at times.)

Incidentally I'm still writing the novel and a few months away from editing it so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

# ¿ May 14, 2014 05:54

Zip: Mar 19, 2006

halleys comet posted:

A good mindfuck would be putting the pages out of order, randomly switching fonts, cutting holes in the paper, etc.

I was already planning on switching the fonts... the whole glitch idea even allows me to say fun things like "Her words seemed to hang in the air, drift into old fashioned lettering before flashing hues of blue and flickering out of existence." I love these other ideas... The problem is, there's an ebook too... In print, these tricks are easy to do... I have NO idea how the publisher is going to do this stuff in the ebook.

SeXReX posted:

You should try to mimic some classic video game glitches.

Random items appearing in her inventory, forcing enemies to clip through the ground partially to be crushed to death and replacing all the stone in a building with water.

This is going to happen now for sure. In fact, I'm going to retool part of book two just to change the way some of these powers function so I can do this more often.

the_lion posted:

I like the ideas so far.

Full page colour glitch with a message that seems scrambled but makes sense later. Hell, even if was black and white with just random black bars and overlapping type like from a typewriter.

Yea... I'm gonna have to find an artist because it would be nice to suddenly have the text change to a physical picture of one of the fight scenes.. That's a wicked idea.

PHIZ KALIFA posted:

Have you read "House of Leaves"? It's the closest thing I can think of to what you're looking for. When "John Dies At The End" was first put online, some parts of the story was placed as a GIF that would flip from words to a freaky image, timed so that the average reader would be somewhere in that paragraph when it happened.

I'll add House of Leaves to my kindle right now... and yea..

John Dies At The End.

Well drat... this is a goldmine.

If any of you want an ebook copy of my first book in the series, let me know your email and what format.

I can't thank you all enough! But give you all shout-outs in the foreword of book two.

Zip fucked around with this message at 04:47 on May 22, 2014

# ¿ May 22, 2014 04:28