5 ms·

The key to creating gorgeous, glitchy YouTube images: anticipation and deletion

68 points by adrian_mrd 8y ago

nwatson 8y ago
I don't find the resulting glitched video very interesting ... it just looks and sounds like an MPEG streaming having trouble in a glitchy low-bandwidth environment. One glitched audio example I found quite beautiful is the audio art piece overlaid on John Adam's "Christian Zeal and Activity" from "The Chairman Dances" album ( https://youtu.be/59ceORsBT0A?t=204 https://youtu.be/59ceORsBT0A?t=204 ). The URL starting at 3:24 provides about a minute music intro to the glitched, cut, re-ordered audio of an Oral Roberts (?) sermon excerpt where he talks about Jesus healing a man with a disabled hand. (Not all performances of this piece use the same audio sample.)
- leviathant 8y ago
  >I don't find the resulting glitched video very interesting ... it just looks and sounds like an MPEG streaming having trouble in a glitchy low-bandwidth environment. "I don't find the resulting distorted audio very interesting ... it sounds like a overdriven amplifier having trouble with a broken low-quality speaker" Often the kind of malfunctioning or low-quality processing that plagues engineers is embraced by creative types. There are countless examples in the audio world over the last half-century - look at the popularity of overdrive pedals and bitcrushers and analog delay effects in a world where pristine amplification and effects processing is possible on affordable consumer-grade equipment. There's a similarity to many of the changes that audio editing and processing underwent in the early 2000s, as tools of the trade become more widely available.
  - lozenge 8y ago
    Somebody else posted this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I - this actually evokes something. There just isn't something creative about the video, which is an unremarkable transformation of an unremarkable video.
    - leviathant 8y ago
      That video is also 13 years old. Data moshing by itself can be about as exciting as listening to a guitar feeding back into an amp. But using it as part of a larger visual palette, and it's like a new kind of seasoning. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMYIWSGlT54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMYIWSGlT54
craigseeman 8y ago
I first saw this effect in https://youtu.be/XEvSTQKO7i4 https://youtu.be/XEvSTQKO7i4 and always wondered how it was done.
- sdca 8y ago
  Here's another one https://youtu.be/tt7gP_IW-1w https://youtu.be/tt7gP_IW-1w And another that mimics the effect https://youtu.be/FQlhQ-GrzLk https://youtu.be/FQlhQ-GrzLk And another that appears to be a mixture of both https://youtu.be/b4Bj7Zb-YD4 https://youtu.be/b4Bj7Zb-YD4
  - dsnuh 8y ago
    Another... https://vimeo.com/3139412 https://vimeo.com/3139412
mistersquid 8y ago
Glitch art makers are a fairly well-established subculture.[0] [1]. My direct familiarity with Glitch art is a commercial app by same name of Glitché. [2] (Note, that site is a disaster even on a fairly modern desktop which may in fact be on-brand, even though it might give HN-types conniption fits.) While the Glitch art subculture seems to have faded from the zeitgeist a bit, Glitch art generates aesthetically satisfying works from "unintentional" data processing errors and in some ways is analogous to what software programmers do when building non-glitchy works. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_art [1] http://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-glitch-it-good/ http://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-glitch-it-good/ [2] http://glitche.com http://glitche.com EDIT: Remove duplicate citation glyph. Reorder citation references. Grammar.
glitcherator 8y ago
Wow. This article is killing me with its Gell-Mann Amnesia effects. It's like reading a history from an alternate timeline. And why doesn't the included Twitter bot link work? https://twitter.com/youtubeartifacts https://twitter.com/youtubeartifacts? And of, course, the linked youtube video is some obvious corporate pop famous-for-being-famous drivel, almost immediately after stating the following: Two years later, the artist Takeshi Murata created “Monster Movie,” which blended footage from a 1981 B-movie and a heavy soundtrack and which is now in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian as perhaps the most influential piece in the datamosh canon. And yet a better Youtube link is avoided: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I But why? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
- DanBC 8y ago
  Please don't use spaces to quote blocks of text. Please do anything but that. Most people put a single > at the start of each paragraph of quoted text.
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    You can also surround the text block in asterisks to put it in italics: > Two years later, the artist Takeshi Murata created “Monster Movie,” which blended footage from a 1981 B-movie and a heavy soundtrack and which is now in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian as perhaps the most influential piece in the datamosh canon.
  - musage 8y ago
    It can be fixed in CSS. Add scrollbars to <pre> on small viewports, or have it wrap on small viewports. Opera Mini could do magic with forcing text to wrap on small displays, why are mobile browsers shit today? If you don't want this to be usable on an actual computer, why not make HN an app and be done with it? Comments could become even shorter and more inane than they generally are already.
  - glitcherator 8y ago
gregsadetsky 8y ago
The Verge article links to an incorrect Twitter handle, it should be @youtubeartifact (and not youtubeartifacts with an 's'). [0] There's a great tutorial/article here [1] on datamoshing / I- and P-frame hacking. Searching for 'datamosh' or 'datamoshing' on YouTube will return many good results. Finally, I also recommend checking out a great glitching iOS app (which does photo & video), Glitch Wizard [2]. [0] https://twitter.com/youtubeartifact https://twitter.com/youtubeartifact [1] http://forum.glitchet.com/t/tutorial-make-video-glitch-art-how-to-datamosh-in-plain-english/36 http://forum.glitchet.com/t/tutorial-make-video-glitch-art-h... [2] http://glitchwizard.com/ http://glitchwizard.com/
soared 8y ago
When I was young you could open a video file in a text editor and try to delete random sections then play the video until you got similar effects.
dajohnson89 8y ago
There's a similar YouTube video style, where random bits of the video are sped up, slowed down, zoomed in, blurred/distorted, etc. Does anyone have an idea what this style is called? [0] is the closest i can find right now as an example, but there's no special effects here it's just splicing/mashup of various clips. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsB7u6wVMpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsB7u6wVMpM edit: Here is a better example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_p9EVsUNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_p9EVsUNE
- marzell 8y ago
  Isn't this style called YouTube Poop or YTP? A little different style, but my favorite [0] is the clip Mr. Banks Has a Mental Breakdown. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-FaceFJYCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-FaceFJYCk edit: fixed zero-based reference index.
  - dajohnson89 8y ago
    Yes! Thank you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Poop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Poop

68 points by adrian_mrd 8y ago

I don't find the resulting glitched video very interesting ... it just looks and sounds like an MPEG streaming having trouble in a glitchy low-bandwidth environment. One glitched audio example I found quite beautiful is the audio art piece overlaid on John Adam's "Christian Zeal and Activity" from "The Chairman Dances" album ( https://youtu.be/59ceORsBT0A?t=204 https://youtu.be/59ceORsBT0A?t=204 ). The URL starting at 3:24 provides about a minute music intro to the glitched, cut, re-ordered audio of an Oral Roberts (?) sermon excerpt where he talks about Jesus healing a man with a disabled hand. (Not all performances of this piece use the same audio sample.)

leviathant 8y ago
>I don't find the resulting glitched video very interesting ... it just looks and sounds like an MPEG streaming having trouble in a glitchy low-bandwidth environment. "I don't find the resulting distorted audio very interesting ... it sounds like a overdriven amplifier having trouble with a broken low-quality speaker" Often the kind of malfunctioning or low-quality processing that plagues engineers is embraced by creative types. There are countless examples in the audio world over the last half-century - look at the popularity of overdrive pedals and bitcrushers and analog delay effects in a world where pristine amplification and effects processing is possible on affordable consumer-grade equipment. There's a similarity to many of the changes that audio editing and processing underwent in the early 2000s, as tools of the trade become more widely available.
- lozenge 8y ago
  Somebody else posted this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I - this actually evokes something. There just isn't something creative about the video, which is an unremarkable transformation of an unremarkable video.
  - leviathant 8y ago
    That video is also 13 years old. Data moshing by itself can be about as exciting as listening to a guitar feeding back into an amp. But using it as part of a larger visual palette, and it's like a new kind of seasoning. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMYIWSGlT54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMYIWSGlT54

craigseeman 8y ago

I first saw this effect in https://youtu.be/XEvSTQKO7i4 https://youtu.be/XEvSTQKO7i4 and always wondered how it was done.

sdca 8y ago
Here's another one https://youtu.be/tt7gP_IW-1w https://youtu.be/tt7gP_IW-1w And another that mimics the effect https://youtu.be/FQlhQ-GrzLk https://youtu.be/FQlhQ-GrzLk And another that appears to be a mixture of both https://youtu.be/b4Bj7Zb-YD4 https://youtu.be/b4Bj7Zb-YD4
- dsnuh 8y ago
  Another... https://vimeo.com/3139412 https://vimeo.com/3139412

mistersquid 8y ago

Glitch art makers are a fairly well-established subculture.[0] [1]. My direct familiarity with Glitch art is a commercial app by same name of Glitché. [2] (Note, that site is a disaster even on a fairly modern desktop which may in fact be on-brand, even though it might give HN-types conniption fits.) While the Glitch art subculture seems to have faded from the zeitgeist a bit, Glitch art generates aesthetically satisfying works from "unintentional" data processing errors and in some ways is analogous to what software programmers do when building non-glitchy works. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_art [1] http://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-glitch-it-good/ http://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-glitch-it-good/ [2] http://glitche.com http://glitche.com EDIT: Remove duplicate citation glyph. Reorder citation references. Grammar.

glitcherator 8y ago

Wow. This article is killing me with its Gell-Mann Amnesia effects. It's like reading a history from an alternate timeline. And why doesn't the included Twitter bot link work? https://twitter.com/youtubeartifacts https://twitter.com/youtubeartifacts? And of, course, the linked youtube video is some obvious corporate pop famous-for-being-famous drivel, almost immediately after stating the following: Two years later, the artist Takeshi Murata created “Monster Movie,” which blended footage from a 1981 B-movie and a heavy soundtrack and which is now in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian as perhaps the most influential piece in the datamosh canon. And yet a better Youtube link is avoided: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1f3St51S9I But why? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

DanBC 8y ago
Please don't use spaces to quote blocks of text. Please do anything but that. Most people put a single > at the start of each paragraph of quoted text.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  You can also surround the text block in asterisks to put it in italics: > Two years later, the artist Takeshi Murata created “Monster Movie,” which blended footage from a 1981 B-movie and a heavy soundtrack and which is now in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian as perhaps the most influential piece in the datamosh canon.
- musage 8y ago
  It can be fixed in CSS. Add scrollbars to <pre> on small viewports, or have it wrap on small viewports. Opera Mini could do magic with forcing text to wrap on small displays, why are mobile browsers shit today? If you don't want this to be usable on an actual computer, why not make HN an app and be done with it? Comments could become even shorter and more inane than they generally are already.
- glitcherator 8y ago

gregsadetsky 8y ago

The Verge article links to an incorrect Twitter handle, it should be @youtubeartifact (and not youtubeartifacts with an 's'). [0] There's a great tutorial/article here [1] on datamoshing / I- and P-frame hacking. Searching for 'datamosh' or 'datamoshing' on YouTube will return many good results. Finally, I also recommend checking out a great glitching iOS app (which does photo & video), Glitch Wizard [2]. [0] https://twitter.com/youtubeartifact https://twitter.com/youtubeartifact [1] http://forum.glitchet.com/t/tutorial-make-video-glitch-art-how-to-datamosh-in-plain-english/36 http://forum.glitchet.com/t/tutorial-make-video-glitch-art-h... [2] http://glitchwizard.com/ http://glitchwizard.com/

soared 8y ago

When I was young you could open a video file in a text editor and try to delete random sections then play the video until you got similar effects.

dajohnson89 8y ago

There's a similar YouTube video style, where random bits of the video are sped up, slowed down, zoomed in, blurred/distorted, etc. Does anyone have an idea what this style is called? [0] is the closest i can find right now as an example, but there's no special effects here it's just splicing/mashup of various clips. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsB7u6wVMpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsB7u6wVMpM edit: Here is a better example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_p9EVsUNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR_p9EVsUNE

marzell 8y ago
Isn't this style called YouTube Poop or YTP? A little different style, but my favorite [0] is the clip Mr. Banks Has a Mental Breakdown. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-FaceFJYCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-FaceFJYCk edit: fixed zero-based reference index.
- dajohnson89 8y ago
  Yes! Thank you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Poop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Poop