Databending (or data bending) is the process of manipulating a media file of a certain format, using software designed to edit files of another format. Distortions in the medium typically occur as a result, and the process is frequently employed in glitch art.
The term databending is derived from circuit bending, in which objects such as children's toys, effects pedals and electronic keyboards are deliberately short circuited by bending the circuit board to produce erratic and spontaneous sounds. Like circuit bending, [1] databending involves the (often unpredictable) alteration of its target's behavior. Databending achieves this alteration by manipulating the information within a media file of a certain format, using software designed to edit files of a different format; distortions in the medium typically occur as a result. [2] [1]
Many techniques exist, including the use of hex editors to manipulate certain components of a compression algorithm, to comparatively simple methods. [1] Michael Betancourt has posed a short set of instructions, included in the Signal Culture Cookbook, that involves the direct manipulation of the digital file using a hexadecimal editing program. One such method involves the addition of audio effects through audio editing software to distort raw data interpretations of image files. Some effects produce optical analogues: adding an echo filter duplicated elements of a photo, and inversion contributed to the flipping over of an image. The similarities result from the waveforms corresponding with the layers of pixels in a linear fashion, ordered from top to bottom. [2] Another method, dubbed "the WordPad effect", uses the program WordPad to manipulate images through converting the raw data to the Rich Text Format. [3]
According to the artist Benjamin Berg, different techniques of the process can be grouped into three categories: [3]
The "WordPad effect" would fall under incorrect editing, while reinterpretation contains a subcategory called sonification, in which data other than audio is introduced simultaneously with musical audio data. The last technique is the hardest of the three to accomplish, often yielding highly unpredictable results. [3]
Databending is frequently employed in glitch art, [2] and is considered a sub-category of the genre. [1] The sonification technique is commonly used by glitch musicians such as Alva Noto. [1] Ahuja and Lu summarized the process through a quote by Adam Clark Estes of Gizmodo as "the internet's code-heavy version of graffiti." [2] [4] Various groups on Flickr explore the effects of databending on imagery; an Internet bot named "GlitchBot" was created to scrape Creative Commons-licensed imagery and apply the process and upload the results. [1] Users on Vimeo who deal explicitly with databending and glitch art in general exist, and a Chicago-based digital art project named GLI.TC/H was funded using Kickstarter in 2011. [5]
A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. Codec is a portmanteau of coder/decoder.
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including: IBM PCs running DOS (1983), Apple Macintosh running the Classic Mac OS (1985), AT&T UNIX PC (1985), Atari ST (1988), OS/2 (1989), Microsoft Windows (1989), SCO Unix (1990), macOS (2001), Web browsers (2010), iOS (2014) and Android (2015). Using Wine, versions of Microsoft Word before 2013 can be run on Linux.
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing. The software's name is often colloquially used as a verb although Adobe discourages such use.
Video editing software, or a video editor is software used performing the post-production video editing of digital video sequences on a non-linear editing system. It has replaced traditional flatbed celluloid film editing tools and analog video tape editing machines.
Waveform Audio File Format is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Windows systems for uncompressed audio. The usual bitstream encoding is the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format.
FLAC is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software package that includes a codec implementation. Digital audio compressed by FLAC's algorithm can typically be reduced to between 50 and 70 percent of its original size and decompresses to an identical copy of the original audio data.
A compression artifact is a noticeable distortion of media caused by the application of lossy compression. Lossy data compression involves discarding some of the media's data so that it becomes small enough to be stored within the desired disk space or transmitted (streamed) within the available bandwidth. If the compressor cannot store enough data in the compressed version, the result is a loss of quality, or introduction of artifacts. The compression algorithm may not be intelligent enough to discriminate between distortions of little subjective importance and those objectionable to the user.
Glitch is a genre of electronic music that emerged in the 1990s. It is distinguished by the deliberate use of glitch-based audio media and other sonic artifacts.
A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among players of video games. More generally, all types of systems including human organizations and nature experience glitches.
Audio equipment refers to devices that reproduce, record, or process sound. This includes microphones, radio receivers, AV receivers, CD players, tape recorders, amplifiers, mixing consoles, effects units, headphones, and speakers.
Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing. The first version, which was originally only a MIDI sequencer and ran on the Atari ST computer, was released in 1989. Cut-down versions of Cubase are included with almost all Yamaha audio and MIDI hardware, as well as hardware from other manufacturers. These versions can be upgraded to a more advanced version at a discount.
VirtualDub is a free and open-source video capture and video processing utility for Microsoft Windows written by Avery Lee. It is designed to process linear video streams, including filtering and recompression. It uses AVI container format to store captured video. The first version of VirtualDub, written for Windows 95, to be released on SourceForge was uploaded on August 20, 2000.
Audio editing software is any software or computer program, which allows editing and generating of audio data. Audio editing software can be implemented completely or partly as a library, as a computer application, as a web application, or as a loadable kernel module. Wave editors are digital audio editors. There are many sources of software available to perform this function. Most can edit music, apply effects and filters, adjust stereo channels, etc.
Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation developed by Adobe Inc. featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view.
The Kaoss Pad is an audio sampling instrument and multi-effects processor originally launched by Korg in 1999. It allows users to record and process audio samples and apply various effects using an X-Y touchscreen.
Circuit bending is the creative, chance-based customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low-voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators.
Graphic art software is a subclass of application software used for graphic design, multimedia development, stylized image development, technical illustration, general image editing, or simply to access graphic files. Art software uses either raster or vector graphic reading and editing methods to create, edit, and view art.
The stutter edit, or stutter effect, is the rhythmic repetition of small fragments of audio, occurring as the common 16th note repetition, but also as 64th notes and beyond, with layers of digital signal processing operations in a rhythmic fashion based on the overall length of the host tempo. The Stutter Edit audio software VST plug-in implements forms of granular synthesis, sample retrigger, and various effects to create a certain audible manipulation of the sound run through it, in which fragments of audio are repeated in rhythmic intervals. The plug-in allows musicians to manipulate audio in real time, slicing audio into small fragments and sequences the pieces into rhythmic effects, recreating techniques that formerly took hours to do in the studio. Electronic musician Brian Transeau is widely recognized for pioneering the stutter edit as a musical technique; he developed, coined the term, and holds multiple patents for the Stutter Edit software plug-in.
Glitch art is the practice of using digital or analog errors for aesthetic purposes by either corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. Glitches appear in visual art such as the film A Colour Box (1935) by Len Lye, the video sculpture TV Magnet (1965) by Nam June Paik and more contemporary work such as Panasonic TH-42PWD8UK Plasma Screen Burn (2007) by Cory Arcangel.