With the guidance of Rosa Menkman, the participants investigated some of the ways in which they can manipulate images. The first way in which they changed the visual aspect of the picture was by changing and copying the picture data in it’s .bmp file. By messing up the picture’s inner structure, the visual outcome was differentiated, giving the image the look of some true generated Glitch art aesthetics. Even more, it is also possible to give the image a coloured pattern by playing with the Interleaved button. With this button you can arrange data on colour. Another way of glitching an image is by playing with it’s compression. Data compression is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use. This makes it possible to cut out colours and change the arrangement of pixels.
The next subject was the manipulation of movies. Menkman showed how you can give movies different shapes and different interfaces. She also explained how to make some nice glitches by using compression. Compression makes it possible to change the colour palette of the film in very many ways. Menkman’s tip: for most websites that do not support changed compression use Snaps Pro, a program which stabilises the compression and makes the movie suitable for the web.
During the workshop, the participants encountered a lot of generated functional errors and also a few unwanted (!) ones. Rosa Menkman took a good amount of time to explain the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of every way of manipulation to each of the participants who, by the end of the workshop, have become true Glitch artists. Everybody was even invited to contribute their work to the Glitch Art festival in Amsterdam the 11th an 12th of November. A binary date, but that was chosen on purpose of course.
