video: stAllio! live at gli.tc/h

a couple weeks back i attended gli.tc/h, a glitch art festival/conference in chicago. i performed saturday night, with improvised video accompaniment by rosa menkman and vade. here's some video of that performace, shot by evan meaney:

advanced wordpad editing explained

so a couple weeks back i mentioned that i was experimenting with a new databending technique that i call advanced wordpad editing. but wtf does that mean, and what is going on in these images?

as i've discussed extensively in the past, when you open a bitmap image in microsoft wordpad and then re-save, it creates a distinctive warping effect i call the wordpad effect. wordpad, thinking the data is inappropriately formatted rich text, tries to "fix" the formatting of the file, corrupting the data in a recognizable (but often surprising) way. but what exactly is going on? pietjepuk666 was the first to solve that puzzle, in the comments:

I've found that Wordpad does at least two things to a binary file; it replaces byte 07 (ascii: BEEP) with a space , and it replaces every lonely 0A or 0D (line feed and carriage return respectively) and also 0B (vertical tab) with the bytes "0A 0D". So the rate of glitching is probably dependent on how dark the picture is, since low bytes like these give dark pixels (i suppose).

this is pretty much right, except in my experience the replacement value is actually 0D 0A, not 0A 0D. (not that it makes much difference here.)

the change from 07 to 20 (space) isn't very noticeable to the eye. it just replaces an almost-totally-black pixel with a slightly-less-black pixel. but every time wordpad replaces a 0A, 0B, or 0D with 0D 0A, it adds one byte to the file. these added bytes are ultimately what causes the wordpad effect—this is why wordpadded images always warp to the right, why the trick breaks fragile formats such as JPG, why darker (but not pitch black) images bend more than lighter ones, and so on.

knowing exactly how the wordpad effect works enables you to take control of the process by specially pre-treating the files before feeding them to wordpad, so that they bend in the way we want to. this can be achieved by altering the file with a hex editor before opening it in wordpad.

the first step—as well as the initial proof of concept—is to strip out any existing 0A, 0B, or 0D bytes from the file. i replace them all with 09, which is close enough that you can't spot it by eye, but you could use 0C, 0E, or whatever. this ensures that the file won't bend anywhere where you don't want it to. (don't delete these bytes; that would cause the image to warp in the opposite direction... a sort of anti-wordpad effect, if you will.)

the next step is to "add" 0A, 0B, or 0D bytes to the file in specific areas (really replacing bytes one at a time, not inserting them—the actual adding will come later when opening it in wordpad) so that it will bend where you want it to. this may sound simple, but it actually involves a lot of math. you need to calculate the y pixel range where you want the file to warp, and convert those to percentages in order to determine the byte range where you want to work. and if you're working with a multichannel non-interleave file, you need to do this for each color channel—not to mention calculating where each channel begins and ends. plus, you need to add lots of bytes to get any significant warping—hundreds if not thousands.

another aspect you may have noticed about my advanced wordpad work is the way it doesn't just warp, but also unwarps. the color channels warp out of phase with each other, but then they coalesce back together. this never happens with the standard wordpad effect, so how is it accomplished?

since wordpad warping is caused by added bytes, the obvious way to undo the warping is by removing bytes. to get color channels back in phase, you need to remove (almost) exactly the same number of bytes as will be added to the file. yes, this means you need to track precisely how many 0A/0B/0D bytes are in the file, and delete exactly that many bytes. i typically do all this manually, one byte at a time, counting in my head as i go along. it's tedious, but it works. if you were a programmer, you could probably write scripts to help with this process.

once all this is done, finally the file is finally ready to be run through wordpad. if you did your math wrong, or miscounted, you may end up with something like this:

oops! i lost count there and my color channels didn't sync up right. (i was eventually able to fix this one.)

working this way raises a number of questions about matters such as whether a "glitch" can be controlled, and so forth. but the most obvious questions is probably what the hell is the point of using wordpad if you're also using a hex editor?
after all, you could just use the hex editor to insert bytes and forgo using wordpad at all.

so why still use wordpad? at first, i needed to do it that way to prove that i had unlocked the mysteries of wordpad, so to speak. i keep doing it that way because i like the romanticism of using such a thoroughly incorrect application, and because the term "advanced wordpad editing" has a nice ring to it—ironically overtechnical... as if there's anything advanced about microsoft wordpad. ¶

advanced wordpad editing

maybe you've already noticed, but my latest databending experiments build on everything i've learned about the wordpad effect in order to actually control how and where images bend:

check out the whole set here. i'll probably add more gradually as i make new ones.

and don't forget, benders: gli.tc/h starts wednesday in chicago! i'll be there, and i'll have copies of my true data 12" for a special event-only price of $5 each. i hope to see you there! ¶

stAllio! @ gli.tc/h conference chicago, oct 2

i can finally announce that i will perform october 2 at the nightingale theatre in chicago as part of the gli.tc/h conference!

here's the lineup for the show:

Jeronimo Barbosa (Recife, Brazil)
Andrew Bucksbarg (Bloomington, Indiana)
Ben Baker-Smith (Chicago) w/ Evan Kühl (Madison, WI)
stAllio! (Indianapolis, IN)
Anton Marini & Aerostatic (New York, NY)

check out the gli.tc/h schedule for more info on gli.tc/h events! (the preliminary schedule is up now; hopefully more details will be filled in soon.)¶

google street view glitches revisited

google keeps its street view reasonably up-to-date by refreshing it periodically, sending around new trucks with new and different cameras. this means that the street view glitches i found back in 2007 have long since disappeared.

but new trucks means new opportunities for glitches, as i discovered while digitally wandering the streets of indianapolis.

these glitches seem to involve a stitching error between the cameras at eye level and those pointed at the ground. if something happens to be physically close enough to the camera at near-ground level, it can end up pretty distorted:

a similar effect can be seen higher up—between the eye-level cameras and the ones pointed toward the sky—though it's less likely there'll be anything up there:

this last one's a real chance moment—a leaf fell on the camera:

update: click through the images to go to flickr... i've added street view links for most of them so you can see the glitches in their "natural" environment.

also, here's one more fun one:

a huge smash is out now!

now is the moment you've been waiting for! the new stAllio! album a huge smash—the long-awaited full-length follow-up to mash smarter not harder—is now available for free download!

a huge smash is 11 tracks of glitchy post-mashup madness. it picks up directly where mash smarter left off, as i smash pop music into increasingly smaller pieces and then weld them back together in new and innovative ways.

this is a completely free download—it's not on itunes and there's no "pay what you want" feature. all i ask is that if you enjoy the album, please share it with your friends. post it on your facebooks, your twitters and reddits, or whatever it is kids do these days. i'm giving this to you for free, and all i'm asking is that you copy and paste the link a few times. that's a price you can't beat! ¶

the wordpad effect and pixel brightness

i got a new computer in the past few months and was looking for an excuse to confirm whether the wordpad effect still works in windows 7 (it does, if slowly). so i figured i'd do a quick experiment to test a hypothesis discussed in the comments of part 1 of my databending primer—that the amount of warping caused by the wordpad effect is dependent on the relative brightness (or darkness) of the source image.

for my source image, i used variations of the same image: text on a solid background. i tried both white text on black background and vice versa, with the text at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% opacity. the black text on a white background showed no warping at all, regardless of opacity. this was consistent with similar experiments i've tried in the past, but still a bit puzzling.

the images with white text on a black background did warp, and hinted at a pattern. [all originals were saved in photoshop raw format, non-interleaved. all images are hosted on flickr; click to go there.]

100% opacity:

75% opacity:

50% opacity:

25% opacity:

pure white (100%) on black warped, but just a little. reducing the text whiteness to 75% produced considerably more warping, and reducing to 25% produced more still. this would suggest a pattern of the text warping more the darker it gets, but that wouldn't explain the result for 50% opacity, which is less warped than 75% or 25%.

since the black-on-white experiment was a bust, i figured i'd try a couple more, this time with solid black text on a gray background.

75% white:

50% white:

25% white:

the results are roughly analogous to those from the white-on-black images: 75% white warps more than 50%, whereas 25% warps most of all.

clearly, it would seem that the source image brightness has an impact on warping, but it's not as simple as darkening an image to make it warp more. ¶

greatest orchestra hits

here it is: the premiere of the new video from a huge smash!

a huge smash will be released for free download on september 14 at badtaste4life.com. ¶

a huge smash is coming september 14

it's a moment years in the making: a huge smash, the full-length follow-up to mash smarter not harder, will be released for free download on september 14!

as i wrote in the original announcement:

a huge smash picks up where mash smarter left off, and from there the samples get shorter, the edits come quicker, and the sound gets distinctively glitchier. this will be the most ambitious stAllio! release ever, and the musical culmination of everything i've been working on for the past several years, as the seeds that i planted in mash smarter come into full bloom.

also, look out for the first (and perhaps only) video from a huge smash, coming in early september! ¶

re-affirming our constitutional principles

shorter gary welsh: the first amendment doesn't apply to muslims, because they are evil and want to destroy america. ¶

incapable of shame

the other day, andrew breitbart posted a highly edited, out-of-context video (discussed here yesterday) which he said proved that USDA official shirley sherrod was a racist, and that, by extension, so was her audience—the NAACP. the video spread like wildfire around right-wing sites and sherrod was soon forced to resign.

but then the full, unedited video came to light, and it vindicates sherrod. virtually everyone now concedes that the original clip was a vicious smear. through deceptive editing, it turned reality on its head, transforming sherrod's tale of redemption—of how she came to overcome racist impulses, 24 years ago, long before she worked for the USDA—into a tale of vindictive oppression against an innocent, helpless white man. even breitbart now admits sherrod was wronged, though he's still highly disingenuous about his role in the scandal and why he posted the video in the first place.

virtually everyone, that is... but not gary welsh. gary's credulous post on the subject remains on his site, with no updates or corrections. as recently as 5:22 last night, longer after he should've known better, he was leaving comments defending his assertions that sherrod and her audience were racists.

will gary welsh post a retraction?

personally, i'm certain he won't. and the reason why i know he won't is because gary has never once posted a retraction of any significance. yes, once or twice he's posted minor corrections, like when he gets the spelling of someone's name or their party affiliation wrong. but despite the many laughably false things that gary has posted over the years, he has never retracted a single one, and i doubt he ever will. i doubt he's even capable of it.

despite what he may claim, gary is completely incapable of admitting a mistake and utterly unable to handle even mild criticism. anyone who criticizes him is assumed to be a dishonest political operator, and ends up on his personal enemies list (which is getting pretty long). i don't know if the problem is that he can't realize when he's wrong, or if he's just too proud to admit it, but either way, the end result is the same: the lies just get bigger and bigger.

update: did i call it or what? far from being able to admit he was wrong, gary doubles down on the insanity.

2nd update: can you believe gary is still going on about what a horrible racist shirley sherrod is? we're beyond satire at this point, folks. ¶

on refuting, refudiating, and repudiating racism

last week, delegates for the NAACP passed a resolution calling on the tea party to repudiate racism. the resolution doesn't accuse all tea partiers of racism, as some would have you believe; it simply points out the well-documented history of racists showing up at tea party events, and asks tea partiers to "make clear there is no place for racism & anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement."

now, when someone asks you to repudiate racism, the correct response is... to repudiate racism. it's pretty simple. tea party leaders could've simply issued a response like this:

we absolutely repudiate racism and other forms of bigotry, and if bigots do turn up at our events, know that they do not speak for us and we don't share their views.

easy, right? had the tea party done this, the story would've been gone in a day, plus the tea party would be insulated against any future accusations of racism—we repudiated racism months ago!

but this being the tea party, they instead went berserk. they accused the NAACP of hypocrisy. they claimed that the "real racists" were the NAACP, not them. and in a development that was probably inevitable, some responded to accusations of racism by becoming even more racist!

that's what happened to mark williams, spokesman for the tea party express. williams first responded by saying that the NAACP makes "more money off of race than any slave trader, ever" and belongs "in the trash heap [...] along with all the other vile, racist groups that emerged in our history."

then, apparently unsatisfied, williams penned possibly the most racist blog post ever, in which he mocked the NAACP for having the word "colored" in their name, then went on to adopt the persona of "tom's nephew", using plainly offensive language to repeat all sorts of horrible stereotypes about african-americans.

the post was so beyond-the-pale, over-the-top offensive that williams was soon forced to take it down, but the damage was already done. williams was demoted; his group was expelled from the tea party federation and denounced by other tea party groups.

so in the end, the NAACP resolution was a partial success: it resulted in the tea party denouncing one of its own leaders.

still, many wingnuts continue to ignore the williams debacle, pretending that there are no racists in the tea party movement and that the NAACP is full of hateful hypocrites. melyssa "miss ann" donaghy—who you'll be either pleased or bemused to learn recently resurrected her blog—tried to pretend that all the racists at tea party events are leftist "infiltrators" sent "to pose as racists". she also suggested that the NAACP were hypocrites because they didn't speak up when a black conservative got beat up this one time, stating that "I hope it is ok by the NAACP to be black and conservative in America!"

apparently to melyssa, the NAACP are hypocrites if they don't specifically and individually denounce every incidence of racism ever, even if they've never heard of it. of course, given the opportunity, they would gladly denounce racist violence against kenneth gladley or anyone else, just as benjamin jealous had no problem denouncing the new black panther party on this week's meet the press. (also, note to melyssa: michael steele, RNC chair, is a longtime NAACP member.)

at least melyssa admits that racists have attended tea party events. gary welsh couldn't even bring himself to do that. first he tried to pin the resolution on michelle obama, simply because she was present at the meeting. (she was actually there to discuss childhood obesity.)

he also trotted out an out-of-context video that's been making the rounds of a black USDA official confessing to having stuggled with racism while performing her job, citing it as proof that the NAACP, not tea partiers, are the real racists. (the NAACP quickly condemned the official, but naturally that's not good enough for gary, who's just looking for an excuse call andre carson a liar.)

gary, and people like him, have a shockingly naive view of racism and bigotry. he has no trouble identifying bigotry when directed at People Like Him by People Not Like Him (though he seems to have completely stopped discussing homophobia—supposedly one of his blog's signature issues), yet he seemingly defines white racism as dressing up in a sheet and lynching folks. and since he and his fellow right-wingers aren't out burning crosses (well... most of them aren't), they therefore aren't racists and their actions are thus not racist. this is why gary doesn't understand when others call him out for racist attitudes in his blog. he assumes that he isn't a racist and is thus incapable of racist thought, so when others point out problematic content, he assumes they must be political opponents who are trying to discredit him. he never bothers to analyze what he's written and why it might be offensive—and perhaps he never will.

of course, everyone has racist or bigoted thoughts from time to time. the key to overcoming bigotry is to recognize these thoughts for what they are and act accordingly.

update: unsurprisingly, the USDA official's story becomes a lot less damning when viewed in context.

2nd update: NAACP has issued a new statement:

With regard to the initial media coverage of the resignation of USDA official Shirley Sherrod, we have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias.


Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.

The fact is Ms. Sherrod did help the white farmers mentioned in her speech. They personally credit her with helping to save their family farm.

Moreover, this incident and the lesson it prompted occurred more that 20 years before she went to work for USDA.

Finally, she was sharing this account as part of a story of transformation and redemption. In the full video, Ms.Sherrod says she realized that the dislocation of farmers is about "haves and have nots." "It's not just about black people, it's about poor people," says Sherrod in the speech. "We have to get to the point where race exists but it doesn't matter." ¶

fight violence with violence, or indianapolis blame expo

shorter abdul hakim-shabazz: you know who i blame for last night's expo shootings? al sharpton! stuff like this proves that black kids deserve to get the crap beaten out of them sometimes. in fact, i'd like to beat some up myself. ¶

hot streak!!!!!!!!!!!

from the journal-constitution:

Indiana among hardest hit by job losses, report says

Indiana has had one of the steepest declines in employment since the recession began, according to new rankings from an economic policy group.

The share of the state's population that's employed dropped more than in all but five other states between November 2007 and May 2010, according to the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project.

The share of Hoosiers employed dropped from 63.5 percent in November 2007 to 57.2 percent in May 2010.

Indiana's 6.3 percentage point drop was even bigger than the 5.6 percentage point decline in Michigan, which has had the highest unemployment rate among states for most of the recession but which also got hit earlier than other states.

good thing we have a financial genius like mitch daniels in the governor's office! ¶

because it's easier to be unfair

shorter indiana supreme court: yes, the fact that absentee voters don't need to show ID is unfair, and essentially defeats the whole point of the voter ID law, but that's okay because checking absentee voters' IDs would be difficult.

[see masson's blog and indiana law blog for more] ¶

perfecting the paranoid style

shorter advance indiana: i believe every anti-obama conspiracy theory. obama hates jews and wants to destroy israel! he's a secret muslim! he wasn't born in this country! he has coked-up gay sex with shady characters! you name it, i believe it... and i have links to crank right-wing web sites that prove it all! ¶

a new design, and some old ones

my latest glitch illustration is now up for voting at threadless—it's a glitch rainbow! if that sounds cool then you'll probably like it; if not then maybe you won't:

in related news, i just set up an account at society6.com. society6 is a site where artists can upload their portfolios, collaborate with each other (and with vendors), and sell gallery-quality prints, t-shirts, and laptop or iphone skins. i have a couple shirts for sale as well as art prints of some of my best illustrations from the past year. enjoy! ¶

we're #28! (according to charity navigator)

charity navigator, a site that researches the finances of various charities, has just released its 2010 metro market study. i wanted to be sure i posted about the study, because its findings contradict the beliefs of a certain right-wing blogger who routinely criticizes local charities despite having no comprehension of how the nonprofit sector works.

in the study of the nation's 30 largest metro areas, indy ranked 28th (up from #29 last year). we ranked below average in every category except administrative expenses, working capital ratio, total expenses, and total net assets. even worse, indy ranked dead last in the categories of fundraising expenses, program expenses, and program expense growth.

our relatively high ranking for administrative expenses (#10) is the opposite of what you might expect if you've been relying on the opinion of said blogger, who regularly claims that indy's charities are bastions of corruption and waste. overall, our charities are actually quite good in this regard. another category i want to point out is indy's low ranking in terms of CEO compensation. yes, despite what some would have you believe, many local charities actually pay their executives too little, and suffer for it. the indy star explains:

In the increasingly complex work of fundraising, the ability to solicit a lot of cash at a minimum cost is paramount. That requires savvy leaders with business and social skills, perhaps honed in the private sector. And it requires someone who won't hesitate to scrap time-consuming, money-wasting donation methods, such as phone solicitations.

Attracting such leaders takes money that some Indianapolis charities have been unwilling to pay.

"Indianapolis has consistently ranked low in CEO compensation," Minuitti said. "These organizations are really multimillion-dollar operations, and that requires a certain level of compensation to attract and retain top talent."

in short, you can't hire just anyone, pay them peanuts, and expect them to do quality work. if you want talented executives, you have to pay them what they're worth—a concept that you'd think right-wingers would understand.

other factors dragging down our rating include the fact that we have a lot of human services charities—which "tend to be hit hard" during recessions—and a reliance on inefficient means of fundraising such as telemarketing, direct mail, and expensive fundraiser events.

of course, the charity navigator study has its flaws. first and foremost, it's lacking in context and can be difficult for the layperson to understand. also, the site's analysis centers on finances, which isn't necessarily the best measure of how a charity is doing—in some fields, it would be better to focus on results. it doesn't matter how efficient your fundraising is if you're not getting good results, and likewise, a bit of inefficiency is fine if you're doing great work. ¶

holding their feet to the fire

shorter gary welsh, this morning: indianapolis star political reporters are just stenographers, uncritically repeating what the city's elite tell them to without researching anything on their own. disgraceful!

shorter gary welsh, last night: police sources tell me that the kid who got beaten up by police deserved to get his ass kicked, but the officer who got fired for kicking his ass didn't deserve to get fired. ¶

allegedly in need of a beatdown

shorter abdul hakim-shabazz, black republican: police are justified in beating the crap out of kids if they suspect one of the kids may have committed a crime. ¶