workshop: hacking the gif

what's this? two posts in a row on this blog?!?

next week i'll be visiting SAIC in chicago as part of RE:MESH.WWWERK/s, and for some reason i decided to make the centerpiece of my visit an in-depth workshop titled hacking the gif. was it a bad idea to do a workshop instead of a performance or screening? probably! but that's how i roll.

this won't be some intro-level workshop about how to make gifs.  it picks up where part 3 of my databending primer left off and then plunges way deeper. i mean it's really in-depth. i have scoured the GIF spec and other technical documents from 20-30 years ago, searching for all the hidden and little-known features within, and figuring out how to hack them.

if you're in chicago on tuesday, come on by. it should be one hell of a workshop. here's the rest of the info from the facebook event page:

Workshop: Hacking the GIF
Tues, April 12, 2016. 12:15 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
LeRoy Neiman Center, 37 S. Wabash, Chicago, IL 60603

The popular Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is widely misunderstood and unfairly looked down upon. Some would tell you it's obsolete, but even today, GIF offers several unique features that no other video or image format has. This in-depth workshop with glitch art pioneer Benjamin Berg (aka stAllio!) explores how to use, misuse, and abuse these features to create animations, still images, and even videos.

* Color tables (global and local)
* Dithering
* The GIF canvas
* Transparency effects
* The interlace flag
* Glitching GIF image data

This workshop is FREE and open to the public. ¶

stAllio! music "news" - sword to your mother, fixed that for you, ++

it's about that time when, once a year, i log in and post something on this blog instead of tumblr, facebook, or any of the other fragmented shards on my online presence. 

first up, a music update: last year i finally completed the sequel to wack cylinders, titled sword to your mother. it's kind of glitchy and kind of ambient. it's a meditation on death and digital decay. it's part 2 of a trilogy i haven't named yet. it was released for free download last october and promptly ignored by music lovers everywhere.





but that's not all  -- i have other releases in the pipeline, ready to be unleashed soon upon this earth. probably the next up will be a post-mashup EP titled fixed that for you. this EP will be the culmination of everything i've been doing with mashup-type music for the past several years. mash smarter not harder was always meant to be a basic introduction to some new ideas, a sort of "lesson one", and a huge smash was then lesson two. it's all been building up to fixed that for you. this is the one you've been waiting for. i expect it to come out in the next few weeks.

and i have a split cassette coming some day on german label betonblume... that was actually done before the others but will probably come out last. so it goes.¶

indiana and the homophobic baker protection act

i know i quit blogging about indiana politics years ago (and have no intention to resume), but how can i stay away when the whole country is talking about us?

as everyone already knows, the state legislature passed SB 101, the so-called "religious freedom restoration act", in a brazen attempt to protect our state's homophobic businesses from having to serve gay couples. many states are or were trying to do the same this year, but we were the first and for that we have earned the nation's scorn. as far as anyone is concerned, indiana is officially bigot central.

perhaps nobody is more angry about this than the state's republican bloggers. but they're not angry at the (overwhelmingly republican) legislature for passing the bill, or at our governor (also republican). no, they're mad at liberals, who they insist are mischaracterizing the bill as being bigoted when it's really about freedom and patriotism and puppy dogs. gary welsh is so worked up about this that he concludes his latest post thusly:

It's no wonder we now live in a country where an element of the government can assassinate a president, civil rights leaders and other world leaders with impunity and carry out false flag events and propaganda campaigns against its own people and have the media castigate the discerning citizens among us as crackpot conspiracy theorists. Creating false realities is now the modus operandi.

governor pence and legislators who voted for the bill have a similar message (except for the assassinations and false flag propaganda part). "read the bill!" the governor begs. this ain't ragu and that ain't in there. likewise, on his tweetle, bill-sponsor scott schneider has been retwittling comments like this:

"RFRA legalizes discrimination" is a false narrative gone viral. The seriousness of the charge matters more than the nature of the evidence.
— Pete Miller (@Sen_PeteMiller) March 28, 2015

so where did all we evil, duplicitous liberals get the idea that this bill was intended to legalize discrimination against gays? maybe we got the idea from scott schneider!

On the other side, conservative groups with deep ties to many Indiana churches are lobbying hard. One such group, Advance America, is making a fact sheet available to churches.

"SB 568 will help protect individuals, Christian businesses and churches from those supporting homosexual marriages," it says. "Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage!"

When asked if the pending legislation would afford such protections, Schneider said it would.

(emphasis mine. SB 568 was a different version of the bill that was dropped in favor of SB 101. schneider was the author of SB 568, so he presumably had a good idea what his bill was intended to do.)

and what about advance america? they've been talking about this since at least january:

Senate Bill 568 is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Senator Scott Schneider is the author of SB 568. Co-authors include the following Senators: Dennis Kruse, Brent Steele, Carlin Yoder, Jim Buck, Amanda Banks, Liz Brown, Jim Smith, Jim Tomes and Greg Walker.
SB 568 will help protect religious freedom in Indiana by providing protection for individuals with sincerely held religious beliefs, along with Christian businesses and churches.
SB 568 will help protect individuals, Christian businesses and churches from those supporting homosexual marriages and those supporting government recognition and approval of gender identity (male cross-dressers).
Here are just 3 examples:

• Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage!
• A Christian business should not be punished for refusing to allow a man to use the women’s restroom!
• A church should not be punished because they refuse to let the church be used for a homosexual wedding!

okay, but who are advance america anyway? they're a lobbying organization headed by a man named eric miller. this eric miller:

so sorry, anyone who tries to tell you that this is all some smear campaign thought up by democrat operatives is being disingenuous. we know for a fact that this is about discrimination because the bill's supporters and sponsors told us so... until word got out, that is. now most of them have suddenly gone silent. (a few of them are still brave enough to write op-eds whining about the gay mafia or call in to radio shows to argue in favor of discrimination, though.)

so maybe law professor david conkle is right that the bill doesn't really legalize discrimination and that any attempts to argue such in court would eventually lose on appeal. (personally i don't trust the supreme court to rule correctly on anything anymore.) but by ignoring the political context, these sorts of legal analysis miss the point. even if the RFRA doesn't actually legalize discrimination, it was supposed to.¶

databending and glitch art primer part 3: the GIF

it's been more than a year since i posted to this blog at all, and more than five years since i posted part 2 of my glitch art primer. so much has changed in the glitch art scene in that time, some of which i may touch on in passing, but let's not get bogged down in nostalgia. we have art to make.

GIF, as seemingly everyone on the internet knows, is an image format that has become synonymous with the fact that it supports animation (even though it wasn't originally intended to). it's extremely popular and in recent years has become popular among glitch artists as well.

i run a tumblr blog called glitchgifs, where i'm regularly asked some variation of the question "how do i make glitch gifs?" my usual answer is that there are three basic ways:

1. glitch a still image several times, then animate it.
2. glitch a video, then make gifs from that.
3. glitch a gif file—the most difficult because the file will likely break and then you'll need to use a program like irfanview to retrieve the damaged frames.

most "glitch gifs" that you see online are made using methods 1-2. in fact, i suspect that the majority of people who ask how to make glitch gifs are really asking how to do the technique that's come to be known as datamoshing. there are lots of great glitch tutorials and resources out there for these methods, so i don't want to waste anyone's time reinventing the wheel. instead, i want to talk more about how the GIF format works, and how you can take advantage of some of its idiosyncrasies.

indexed color

unlike other common image formats (most of which use RGB color mode), GIF uses indexed color mode. "indexed" here means that gifs handle color using a color table that defines every color used in the image. this has a lot of implications, first and foremost being that gifs have a very limited color palette—usually no more than 256. this is a huge difference compared to formats like JPG and PNG that support up to millions of colors.

it's notable that the color table is usually stored in the gif file itself. that means that we can glitch it, if we're careful. just take a gif and change the data in the table (and only that data):

you have to be pretty precise to do this without breaking it—the global color table (when present) starts at byte 14 usually starts around byte 44-45, and each 8-bit color takes up 3 6 bytes (or 6 hex characters). so your best bet is probably using a hex editor, though perhaps some kind soul will write a web app or processing script that makes it easy to replace the colors in an existing gif in this fashion. (hint, hint)

transparency

another classic feature of GIF is support for transparency, which is handled by defining one of the colors in the table as transparent. but this can go wrong: google+ used to have a glitch in its gif uploader that confused transparent pixels with solid black ones, and vice versa. this created bizarre ghosting artifacts, as it would just lay the frames on top of each other, with some bits invisible so you could see the frames beneath:

 g+ has since been fixed but you can create similar effects using tools like klear.me:

if you're super handy with a hex editor, you can even play with transparency there by manipulating the graphic control extension block. when present, this block will be eight bytes long, with the first three bytes being 21 F9 04 and the eighth byte always being 00. if present at all, there will be one GCE block for each frame in the animation.

again: if it's used at all, there will be one such block at the beginning of each frame... meaning you could even use different settings for each frame! more detailed information here.

dithering

early computer graphic designers using limited color palettes often had to use tricks to create the illusion of color depth. GIF uses a trick called dithering—simulating colors using randomly- or algorithmically-produced patterns of dots. with dithering and a well-chosen color table, it's possible to create gifs with almost-photorealistic colors.

each individual dither is just one pixel. that can be awfully small on today's screens, so to really play with dithering, you may want to enlarge them, like in daniel temkin's dither studies. to enlarge an image and get that "big pixel" look that i love so much, the setting is usually called something like nearest neighbor or preserve edges/crisp edges. many web browsers now support this as well, which means you can load up a gif in a web app like my HTML5 image filter, crank up the size slider, and watch the pixels dance. 

(ironically, this feature works beautifully in browsers like firefox, even though the actual CSS filters themselves don't work in that browser, whereas the filters work in chrome, but chrome doesn't currently support "crisp edge" resizing!)

when upsizing your pixels in this fashion, the usual advice is to always go in powers of 2—200%, 400%, 800%, 1600%, etc. this will ensure that you get the crispest edges possible. but hey, maybe you want your edges to be a little messy...

more fun with color tables

if it's possible to get almost-photolike colors in a gif with the right color table, then from a glitch artist's perspective, we might be more interested in going the other way—deliberately using the "wrong" color tables to accentuate the dithering. for example, the "bitcrushed" look used by artists like jonCates involves extremely small color tables: as small as 2-4 colors.

i've taken a different approach with my color tables series. a year or so ago i was using photoshop's "save for web" dialog, preparing to save an image, when something about the color table caught my eye. the colors, the composition of how they were arranged (sorted by luminance)... these were beautiful and i was compelled to save it and take a screenshot. this became glitch color table #1.

so i started collecting color tables and posting them on tumblr. i've collected and published a few dozen now, many of them derived from glitched or bent source images. but these color tables aren't just pretty pictures—they're also tools for creating other artworks. by deliberately applying a color table that has few colors in common with the source material, we can get some unusual effects, as the software is forced to choose the "best" of many bad options. glitch color table #1 has no green in it, so watch how it deals with grass:

of course, you don't have to start a color table collection. you can load color tables directly from another gif, or use a palette editor program to design or edit your own dream color table. and though you're welcome to download and use mine, there are probably bunches more color tables floating around online. want to use the color palette from the original nintendo NES or gameboy? get the color tables here!

i've been using this trick a lot lately, such as in my dither sunsets series and my latest video. i start out by shrinking the source image/video at the beginning, which allows me to enlarge it back later once the dithering has been added. then i try it out with different color tables, and when i find a result i like, i enlarge it again. i can even animate them by exporting several different versions with slightly different dither settings, and then stringing them together into a gif:

so there you have it: GIF is far more than just an export format for silent video loops. it is a unique format to be mastered, with its own world of artifacts waiting to be explored.¶

obligatory six-month update

hello, little blog! how have you been? things have been pretty good for me... well, except for the one incident...

back in july, virago & i went to milwaukee to see four legends of midwest breakcore: stunt rock, abelcain, doormouse, and anonymous. (doormouse, you may recall, headlined the after-party at our wedding.)

the show was great, with three of the performers effectively coming out of retirement for the show. the music was great, we got to chat and catch up with doormouse and stunt rock, and made some new friends. and we did other fun milwaukee stuff like dining out (milwaukee loves friday fish fries and something called "pulled ham", which is like pulled pork, except it's ham), record shopping, and the obligatory brewery tour.

then on the way home, we were cruising the chicago freeway when another driver "fell asleep" and crashed into my rear bumper at full speed. (i don't know how you fall asleep on the freeway at 3 in the afternoon without drugs, alcohol, or a medical condition, but that was her story.) we were then pushed down the freeway an unknown distance, hit the curb, and spun around 360 degrees, ending up in the left lane with a broken front axle.

somehow, despite the fact that the chicago freeway is pretty busy on a weekday mid-afternoon, we didn't hit the median or any other vehicles. we could easily have been killed, but escaped with only minor injuries (virago had some back pain for a few days, but that was it). but of course my car was totaled, and the six-pack of new glarus beer i had picked up to bring home was in the trunk right at the point of impact, sending beer and broken glass all over the trunk, and damaging a few of the records i'd brought with me for trade.

so that sucked, but at the same time it became an opportunity to get a newer car. after getting our insurance check, we headed out to terry lee honda (chosen because it was the best-reviewed honda dealer in the metro area, and after going there it's clear why) and now we have a 2011 civic—the same model as my previous car, only 10 years newer, in black, and a touch more blinged out.

so, near death experience aside, things have been good. i've been keeping busy. i finished a new release called taco meat, coming hopefully soon on a german label called betonblume. it's a bit glitchy, with some wack cylinders-style sampling but this time with beats—with actual drum programming (and not just sequencing percussion sounds sampled from somewhere else). i'm really pleased with it.

i've been making tons of art as well, and getting work in art shows. this summer i was in a show called run, computer, run (show is over but you can still view my piece on the website). i also have work in a show called _ģ̶Ł̶1̶ɫ̶C̶ʮ̶_Δ┌┼---\/\/\/\/\/\/!┬---jonCates_(AKA "Glitch Art with jonCates"), which opens tomorrow in saskatchewan as well as online at gl1tch-4rt.tumblr.com. then later this month i'll have a piece in a show called money as error. and i'm currently working on something pretty cool for the wrong - new digital art biennale, which opens november 1. all that, and i post new work daily at stallio.tumblr.com, and a couple other things in the works i probably shouldn't mention yet. and did i mention i'm still doing my weekly net radio show Active Listening / The Act of Listening on numbers.fm?

so yeah, i've been productive. stay tuned for future updates (though following me on facebook or tumblr will probably yield better results than relying solely on this blog). ¶

just how bad is soundcloud's "automatic content protection system"?

as many of you know, one of my music processes is is a form of sonification (or audification) where i trick my computer into opening various data files as if they were sound files, and then i make music out of the resulting sounds. (i wrote a tutorial about it here.)

a while back i posted an old song called "denial of service" to soundcloud because i was thinking about including it on my recently-released album on the DLL. the song is what you might call "pure" data sound, in that every sound in the song is made of this sonified data. so imagine my surprise when i got an email from soundcloud that they'd taken the song down because they thought i had sampled some house song:

i repeat: every sound in my song is taken from sonified data. no drum machines, drum samples, or any other instruments were used. but somehow my song still triggered an automatic takedown for uncleared sampling. i didn't even run any audio effects on the samples—they are all clean.

want to hear for yourself? here is my song (warning: fairly abrasive). and here is the song they think i sampled (warning: fairly mediocre). no human who listened to these two recordings would think they had anything in common.

as a glitch artist/musician, i find this fascinating. what could this algorithm be hearing in my song to make it think i sampled some house track? in terms of tone, timbre, tempo, and meter, these two recordings could hardly be more dissimilar. but to a bot, they apparently sound alike. somewhere in there, indiscernible to mere human hearing, the two must have some tonal sweep or polyrhythm in common. or some checksum came up with the same result by chance. it's hard to even speculate about how this may have happened without knowing more about how their bot works.

but it's also frustrating that my song has been pulled down based on such a laughably false accusation. and although i'm certain i will win the dispute, it's annoying to have to send soundcloud my name, address, and phone number, as well as tick seven checkboxes threatening to sue my ass off if i'm lying:

of course, there's no way for me to take soundcloud to court for wasting my time or for issuing bogus threats. all this because of a poorly programmed bot. in a way i'm lucky that my song obviously doesn't contain any "musical" samples of any sort. what would happen if i had made some housey track that just happened to use the same drum hits, or just sounded similar?

update: within a couple hours of filing a dispute, i received the following message:

thank you for providing feedback in regards of the upload:
stAllio! - denial of service

This notification is to inform you that your upload has been released to your account.
Thanks,
The SoundCloud team

so although it's reassuring that these disputes are reviewed quickly, it's alternately fascinating and horrifying that such a thing could happen in the first place. and i must wonder what would've happened if my case hadn't been so open-and-shut. ¶

summoning ghost frames

this is a write-up of the ghost frames workshop i delivered at GLI.TC/H 2112

ghost frames is a term i use to describe video frames which do not actually exist in a video file but which are sometimes revealed when using damaged data and/or glitch processes. for the sake of discussion, i'll also use "ghost frames" to refer to the process i use to invoke these frames. my process involves a bug in certain versions of avidemux, though there are likely other ways you could do something similar. (nick extracrispy tells me he can do something similar in quicktime, for example.)

specifically, i use avidemux version 2.5.4. the process is likely to work in other 2.5 and earlier versions, though i haven't tested them. it definitely does not work in the current version, 2.6. also, during the workshop, some mac users reported that they couldn't get avidemux to install. for os x lion/mtn lion, check these instructions for installing avidemux.

i initially discovered ghost frames thanks to another glitchy behavior in avidemux. my desktop computer runs windows 7 and has a video capture card for recording tv signals off a coax connection. the default tv capture program in windows 7 is called windows media center, which records programs in a format called WTV. WTV is proprietary (closed) format, but it's close enough to MPEG that when i try to open a WTV file in avidemux 2.5.4, it asks me "This looks like an MPEG. Do you want to index it?"

answering yes to this question and no to any follow-up questions results in a video that is recognizable but thoroughly mangled. here are some typical examples:

occasionally you'll get weirder, unpredictable glitches like this:

i'd been playing around with this wtv transcoding glitch for months before i saw my first ghost frame, which i discovered by accident. to invoke ghost frames in avidemux, scroll through a damaged video backwards. just skip to the end (or any point in the middle, if you prefer), and use your left arrow key to reverse through the file. if your file is damaged in the "right" way (say, via WTV transcoding), then you'll start to see frames that aren't really there:

what seems to be happening here is that avidemux is getting confused and applying incremental changes in the wrong direction. to save space, MPEG files only occasionally send full frames (keyframes or i-frames) and fill the rest of the video with p- and b- frames that only describe which pixels have changed since the previous frame. reversing through the file seems to trick avidemux into applying these changes wrong, thus revealing glitched frames that aren't actually in the file. (and i love the fact that you do this by going in reverse; it really makes it seem like some magic ritual.)

you can even do something i call dancing between the keyframes, inching back and forth through a glitchy area of the file as the artifacts become increasingly pronounced:

of course, it's one thing to see a ghost, and something else altogether to capture a ghost. ghost frames disappear just as suddenly as they appear. skip so much as one frame too far and those ghostly glitches you've been cultivating could vanish. you can't just hold down the left arrow key and storm through the place: you have to inch along. you have to creep.

so that's how you summon ghost frames from WTV files. it's all well and good if you're running windows 7 with a tv capture card, and have video content you can pipe through a coax connection, but that's a fairly narrow demographic. also, WTV transcoding introduces some artifacts i'd prefer to be able to turn off, like the banding at the top of the screen. so when preparing for the ghost frames workshop, i spent a few hours digging around for non-WTV files that would work with this process. most files i tried wouldn't. but by chance, i found one file that did. further investigation revealed that the teaser videos on NSFW adult website ellinude.com could be used to summon ghost frames—but only the videos from the past several months. (i don't have a subscription to the site so i don't know if the full-length subscriber videos glitch in the same way, though it seems likely.)

fun glitches! but because i found these files in the wild and they seem to be normal working video files, i don't know what about them makes them glitch like this. more about that below.

areas to explore

1. crack the mystery of what makes the ellinude videos glitch. is it something in the encoding settings? something in the camera that shot them? something in the actual frame content? a combination, or other factors? the obvious goal is to reproduce these effects on files of our own choosing.
   my analysis suggests these files were encoded using ffmpeg, but i haven't quite been able to reverse-engineer the encoding settings. (and don't know if it would do much good even if i could.) some metadata from some of the video files is available here (thanks to antonio roberts for his help compiling this metadata).
2. if we can summon ghost frames from transcoded WTV files and from ellinude's MP4s, then they could likely be found in other types of mangled/miscoded video. damaged/databent files, deliberately poor encoding, hacked codecs, etc are possible avenues for source video.
3. this process has a lot of similarities with datamoshing. the two processes could likely be combined to interesting effect.
4. version/system sensitivity testing—will this process work in other versions of avidemux, and if so which ones? will the same file produce the same ghost frames using different versions of avidemux or different operating systems?
5. identify other tools/processes for summoning ghost frames.¶

stAllio! - on the DLL out now!

my new data sound release on the DLL is now available for streaming or pay-as-thou-wilt download on bandcamp! this album has been in the works for more than a year and i'm pretty stoked to finally release it. here's the write-up:

stAllio!'s triumphant return to the world of sonified data! once again, stAllio! plunges deep into his hard drive and listens to the data -- image files, executables, and link libraries alike are converted to sound for his review. the choicest bits of data are then meticulously assembled into music: glitchy melodies, skittery rhythms, and thunderous beats emerge from the digital noise. you could call it IDM (interpreted data music), dirty 8-bit, or glitch-hop. stAllio! used to call it databent music, but these days prefers the simpler term data sound.

this is stAllio!'s first full-length release in the data sound style (his label debut, dissonance is bliss!, and 2004's true data 12", were both EPs) and his first release as a pay-as-thou-wilt bandcamp download. so stream it online, download it for free if you're feeling cheap, or even chip in a few bucks for your music the way people used to -- but whatever you do, don't sleep on this!¶

stAllio! at GLI.TC/H 2112

it's that time again! tomorrow i'll be driving up to chicago for GLI.TC/H 2112! GLI.TC/H is pretty much the premiere glitch art event in the world and i'm excited to be taking part again this year. i'll be here and there throughout the weekend, checking out various panels, performances, and workshops. and in particular i'll be participating in the following:

• i'll be part of a panel discussion on the subject of "glitch porn" friday afternoon, as part of the glitch cultures thread.
• i'll be doing a short improvisational performance friday night for the "no media" performances, teamed up at random with another artist.
• i'll be leading a workshop on my ghost frames process saturday morning for the dirty new media w3rkstation.

check out the full schedule of events here. maybe i'll see you there! or maybe you'll see me but i won't see you... some events will be streamed online for those who are unable to make it out to chicago.¶

introducing glitch pillows

from the "things you never knew you wanted until now" files: glitch throw pillows!

if you'd told me even a week ago that the most popular item In my society6 shop—more popular than t-shirts or laptop skins, even—would be throw pillows, i probably would've thought your prognosticator circuit was faulty. pillows aren't something i generally gave much thought to, let alone get excited about. and judging from the comments at this prostheticknowledge post, i'm far from alone there.

so i didn't know what to expect when i got the email that society6 now offered pillows, and was as surprised as anyone by how sharp these things look:

(yes, these are computer-generated preview images, but society6 does good work & i have faith these will look just as good in person.)

on reflection, it makes perfect sense: these pillows are as big as an art print, but much more functional & practical, plus you don't have to worry about stuff like framing. and because they're offered by society6, a create-on-demand site that can make them at scale, they're more affordable than limited-edition products like notendo's glitch scarves or philip stearns's glitch blankets.

and the timing couldn't be better: glitch is hotter than ever (it's even a core component of the latest hit disney movie, which i highly recommend)... and just in time for the holiday shopping season. the world is practically begging for a little piece of glitch pulled up from the matrix into their homes.

finally, it feels good to be getting some recognition for my big pixels series, which i feel is some of the best glitch work i've done, but which tends not to get as much attention on tumblr as my glitch gifs do. (of course, if you could put an animated gif on a pillow at that price, i'm sure that would sell even better.)¶

taking advantage of google+'s "transparent black" glitch

google rolled out version 2 of their google+ service a few months back, and it seems to have a glitch involving the resizing of animated gifs. the glitch causes black pixels to be misinterpreted as transparent, which results in ghosting artifacts. i've taken to calling this glitch transparent black. naturally, many artists's first reaction to this glitch is that they want to avoid it, but my immediate reaction was that i wanted to learn how to deliberately invoke it. this post will tell you how to do both.

here's how the glitch works. google+'s "preview" window is a seemingly arbitrary 497 pixels wide. if you upload a gif that's wider than this, google+ will resize it to 497, showing the resized version in the preview window, and allowing you to click it to view the original, full-sized gif. but if your original has any true black pixels, these will turn transparent in the resized gif.

for example, here's one of my gifs before posting to google+:

and here's what it looks like after:

you may have already guessed at a technique for how to avoid this glitch. one is to simply size your gifs to 497 pixels or fewer in width. another is to not use black—or if you want to use black, use a color that looks black but isn't quite #000000.

but if you're like me and you want to play around with this glitch, here are some tips:

• your gif needs to be wider than 497 pixels. 500 is often big enough, but bigger than that will work.
• your gif must have "true" black. i don't know if there's a tolerance (if, say, #000001 would be close enough, or even #0F0F0F), but merely "looking black" isn't enough. the easiest way to ensure that your gif has true black in photoshop is to add a "curves" adjustment layer at the top of the layer stack, and then use the "set black point" eyedropper. pick a pixel that's "close enough" to black and click it with the black-point dropper. all pixels of that shade or darker will turn to true black. you may also want to set a white point using the white-point eyedropper, but this isn't necessary.
  
  
• that's it! simply upload your gif to google+ and it should come out glitched. you may then save the glitched version using right-click (or whatever the mac equivalent) and post it elsewhere. note that resized version of your gif may actually be larger (in terms of storage space) than the original, so if you want to repost it somewhere with a size cap (like tumblr), you may need to re-encode to shrink the file.

i've been using the tag #transparentblack on google+ and #transparent black on tumblr, so if you experiment with this glitch, tag your posts accordingly so that others can find them. and happy glitching!

special thanks to lorna mills, manuel fernandez, prosthetic knowledge, and anthony antonellis ¶

i'll tumblr for ya

i've been spending a lot of time on tumblr lately (more time than on this blog, obviously), posting and reblogging gifs on glitchgifs. but as much as i love glitch gifs, they're a small fraction of my work. and since that blog has such a narrow focus, i've gone for days at a stretch where i didn't have any of my own content to post and was only reblogging other people's work. that's cool for as far as it goes, but frustrating because i have such a large body of work that i can't post there. the weirdest was when i would see that someone else had posted something of mine, and i couldn't even reblog it because it didn't fit the format!

you can probably see where this is going: i've started a new tumblr devoted to my work. that blog will be a blend of new and old content, revisiting past work (but with new commentary) as well as featuring new work (and i've been sitting on a bunch of new glitch art). i've always been reluctant to feature my image work too heavily here at stAllio!'s way, at most linking to a flickr photoset and telling you to check it out there. at stAllio! on tumblr my visual work will be front and center, though of course there will be music too—past and present, solo and with others, as well as my net radio show Active Listening / The Act of Listening, which for some reason i haven't been promoting very much here either.

in short, fans of my music and/or visual work should follow me at http://stallio.tumblr.com/ (there's an RSS feed if you're not a tumblrer).

as for the blog you're reading now (stAllio!'s way), it will remain in its current form: a more text-focused forum for occasional longer-form writing, with scattered links to noteworthy projects, upcoming show announcements, and the like. ¶

cut party tour, tonight in indy!

obviously i don't come around these parts so often anymore or i would've already posted about tonight's show at melt house! (or, for that matter, about this past sunday's show in muncie.) i believe this will be my first hometown appearance in three years, and this will also be only the second time i've performed material from my upcoming full-length data sound release—tentatively titled on the DLL and due for release sometime this year (perhaps summer). so if you're a fan of my true data 12", you're going to want to hear the new stuff.

also on tonight's bill: chicago's halluciphile, touring act muerto zoke vs 3ton cinema, and melt face. the latest word is that cincinnati's boy fruit may not be able to make it, but this is still a must-see lineup for fans of noisy, experimental electronics.

for more information about the cut party tour, including info on upcoming dates in other cities, check out http://badtaste4life.com/cutparty2012tour/. ¶

animals within animals - produce, abuse, resample out now!

animals within animals are back with a new full-length album: produce, abuse, resample! it's 60+ minutes of noisy collage and sample abuse, and as always is available for free download from badtaste4life.com.

check it out, and share it with your friends and/or enemies. ¶

application sensitivity revisited: the results

note: this post will be updated if/when i receive more results

here are the results from the experiment in my previous post. this is a collaborative experiment that requires audience participation to work, so if you haven't taken part yet, please read about the experiment and follow the directions—it should only take a few minutes.

our first batch of results come from iriXx, who is running mac OS X Lion (10.7.2). here is the glitched image in safari:

mac-safari.jpg

as you can see, this is virtually indistinguishable from bollybend3mac (which was captured using OS X 10.4 and looks the same on my ipad). the only real difference here is that the colors are brighter; this may not even be a difference in the rendering engine—it could be explained by using different encoding options or codecs when creating the JPEGs.

here it is in firefox on OS X 10.7.2:

mac-firefox.jpg

this looks pretty much like it did in firefox on my wife's machine, except for the green bar at the bottom.

most interesting is this screenshot, generated using the mac program preview, which shows that the image thumbnail renders very differently from the image when viewed in that same app full-size:

mac-preview.jpg



(click to view larger)

iriXx also tried it in android "(running CyanogenMod 7.1, in default Browser and in Dolphin)", but couldn't get it to open. this likely means that damaged JPEGs won't open in android at all, but we need more results before we can conclude whether this is the case.

please join in the experiment! i'll give you a shout-out and post any interesting screenshots here (and eventually on the results page). ¶

application sensitivity revisited: an experiment

i finally got around to reading hugh s manon's and daniel temkin's excellent "notes on glitch" (it took me a while to get to it, despite the fact that it cites my work and i consulted briefly with daniel about sonification while he was working on it). overall, it's a great essay full of glitch art insight, but i wanted to quibble with one bit, and use that as a springboard to revisit one of my early experiments. from the essay:

12. During the process of its creation, glitch art appears stochastic. It is difficult to foresee which alteration of data will metastasize, which will instantaneously kill the file, and which will have no discernible effect. However, from the point of view of the file, whose "genetic predispositions" are rigid and fixed, there is nothing random about glitching. "Open 57904.jpg >> replace all Q with 9hJ" produces exactly the same results every time. Alternately, we could say that glitch practice is pseudo-aleatory, since results which appear random are in fact entirely reproducible.

though it's true that glitches aren't "random" in the sense that they do follow rules, no matter how incomprehensible to us those rules may be, it's an oversimplification to say that any given glitch "produces exactly the same results every time". to say this is to ignore the role that the rendering engine plays in visualizing the glitch.

different rendering engines sometimes render the same glitched data in different ways. this is what i call application sensitivity (for want of a better term). examples:

• a file that is too corrupted to open in one application may open in another—adobe photoshop generally won't open damaged JPEGs, but others (including many web browsers) will
• some corrupted files will render in different ways depending on the application that's reading them—compare a glitched PSD file opened in its native photoshop to the same file opened in gimp (or even in a different version of photoshop)
• glitched files may even render differently when opened in the same application but on different hardware (though this could still be a software issue related to subtly different codecs etc being installed on the different machines)

so let's revisit my bollybend experiment from 2005. in that experiment, i posted an actual glitched JPEG which i knew rendered differently on different software, and i asked my readers to submit screenshots of what it looked like on their systems. i then reposted all of the different versions here.

software and hardware have changed a lot since i first did that experiment, to the point that this same file renders differently on modern systems than it did on 2005's systems.

here is the actual bent JPEG:

the file above will not even open in internet explorer. here's what it looks like in chrome on my computer (running windows 7):

bollybend3-chrome.jpg

here's what it looks like on my wife's machine (firefox 9.0.1 on win7):

bollybend3-ffox.jpg

here's how it looks in microsoft paint on my machine:

bollybend3-paint.jpg

here's how it looks when i insert it into a word 2003 document:

bollybend3b.jpg

here's how it looks on our ipad (running i think iOS 4.3):

bollybend3mac.jpg

and here's how it looks in firefox on my several-year-old laptop:

bollybend3c.jpg

compared to the results from last time, i got three brand-new variations, just by opening the file on newer systems. there are surely more variations out there—in addition to whole new browsers and operating systems on the market now (such as chrome and win7 above), there are also a lot more smartphones and tablets out there. i'm curious how the file might render on an android phone or on web os, for example. but to find out, i'll need your help!

how you can help with this experiment

scroll up to look at the glitched JPEG at the top of this post. compare it to the other versions. if it doesn't match any of them, take a screenshot* and email it to me along with information about what browser and OS you're running. you don't need to crop it for me, but you're welcome to if you like (the image should be 333x485).

submitted images will be posted here on the blog as well as on the results page, and you will of course be credited for your contribution.

extra credit: for bonus points, save the glitched file to your machine and try opening it in other image editors (it probably won't open in photoshop), insert it into word processing files or other types of documents, etc and send me screenshots of any interesting results you get.¶


*(here's how to take screenshots in windows and how to do it in OS X.)

new ventures: active listening radio & glitch gifs

obviously i haven't been posting to this blog too often lately, and i don't expect that to change anytime soon because i'm taking on even more new projects this year (on top of 2-3 albums in the works, ongoing glitch art experiments, etc).

first, i've started a tumblr blog devoted entirely to glitch gifs. there you'll find awesome glitch art animated gifs created by myself and dozens of other artists. the URL, shockingly, is glitchgifs.tumblr.com.

i'm also starting a brand-new net radio show called Active Listening / The Act of Listening. the show takes its name from an essay by john oswald:

As a listener my own preference is the option to experiment. My listening system has a mixer instead of a receiver, an infinitely variable speed turntable, filters, reverse capability, and a pair of ears.

An active listener might speed up a piece of music in order to perceive more clearly its macrostructure, or slow it down to hear articulation and detail more precisely. Portions of pieces are juxtaposed for comparison or played simultaneously, tracing "the motifs of the Indian raga Darbar over Senegalese drumming recording in Paris and a background mosaic of frozen moments from an exotic Hollywood orchestration of the 1950's (a sonic texture like a "Mona Lisa" which in close-up, reveals itself to be made up of tiny reproductions of the Taj Mahal.")

each week i'll play music and sound art somehow related to this theme (glitch, remix culture, prepared records, etc) as well as do some active listening experiments here in the studio, shining new light on old records by playing them in nonstandard ways.

tune in each sunday night at 9:38 pm eastern on http://numbers.fm/! if you're good, i may even archive old episodes somewhere. ¶

stAllio! glitches in front magazine

i'm pleased to announce that some of my glitches were published in the latest issue (#163) of the british magazine front. specifically, i glitched some photos for their feature on dubstep artist joker.

front is a lifestyle magazine that covers music, video games, culture, and—like all british publications—includes photos of nude women (specifically "alt" women with natural busts). you can buy paper copies from their web shop to be shipped anywhere in the world, or if you prefer virtual magazines that can only be viewed using proprietary software, they have that, too. they even have a censored "SFW" digital version for smartphones and tablets, so if you have an ipad and/or want to avoid any risk of seeing an exposed nipple, you're in luck!

i haven't received my copies yet, but here's a taste of the first two pages, courtesy of antonio roberts, who nipped on down to the newstand to snap some photos for me:



i am also available to do glitches at parties or glitch your wedding photos. ¶

upset about the mote in his brother's eye

gary welsh is frothing at the mouth because a democratic politician said mike pence "is like a rabid dog" in his pursuit of an immigration law for indiana.

gary himself is well-known for using laughably over-the-top language such as his claim last month that "The entire Obama presidency is based on a series of forgeries", so it's odd that he is so upset about the words rabid dog, which are pretty tame as far as political insults go. but perhaps he's not so upset by the words themselves, but by the unforgivable rhetorical offense of name-calling.

People can disagree on the answer to any problem with which we are confronted without resorting to name-calling, but if you are a liberal, it's much easier to resort to the demonization of your political counterparts than debate the merits of your argument.

he concludes his post with this:

If you can't win on the merits of the debate, let the name-calling begin. It takes much less effort to name call than debate the substance of your arguments.

indeed, name-calling takes way less effort than rational debate, which is probably why gary routinely uses it in his own writing. just in the past three weeks, gary:

• wrote that county clerk beth white is "totally unethical" and "can't be trusted to run impartial elections"
• in the same post, called lobbyist greg hahn "a highly partisan [...] sleazeball attorney"
• said of city-council candidate kostas poulakidas, "What a total sleazebag!"
• wrote that "the [Indianapolis] Star is the best friend the corrupt politicians in this state have" and columnist "Matt Tully is just a tool for the corrupt political insiders in this town"
• complained that "the Star's editors and reporters are too stupid to realize" that poulakidas was guilty of a felony for sending out a mailer that gary didn't like

to be sure, sifting through gary's blog for ad hominem insults and fallacious reasoning is like picking fleas off a rabid dog—it's easy, but the longer you do it, the more likely you'll end up getting sick.

so when gary complains about name-calling as if it's not his bread and butter, is he being deliberately hypocritical, or just demonstrating his typical lack of self-awareness? ¶

this weekend in chicago: GLI.TC/H 20111

i'm pleased to announce that i will once again be performing in chicago as part of GLI.TC/H! GLI.TC/H is an international glitch art conference and festival, with events and exhibitions in chicago, amsterdam, birmingham, and online. i'll be performing friday night, november 4, at the enemy.

this year i have a special treat: an entire set of all-new, never-before-heard datasound music—my first new material in this vein since true data—with live video accompaniment by video artist glitchard nixon!

also on the bill that night: performances by i ♥ presets, morgan higby-flowers, and cracked ray tube, as well as video screenings and something called glitch karaoke. and that's just one night: GLI.TC/H will be in chicago all weekend, so check the full schedule for more info.

did i mention that all GLI.TC/H events are free? so if you're in the chicago area, you really have no excuse not to show up.

here's a video bumper i put together to promote the conference, with a sneak preview of a few seconds of one of my new tunes... if you want to hear more, you'll either have to show up friday night or wait for the release (tentatively titled does not compute, with possible release next spring):