Moshing

This is a guest post from Crystal Sanchez and Meagan Baco. Thanks, Crystal and Meg!

Glitch art and data moshing, became the best way that we could illustrate what happens when historic buildings are left to demolition-by-neglect and also, when they are ruthlessly demolished.

We messed with the video files themselves, like fools were messing with our built heritage, our mistreatment of the bits reflected the mistreatment of the bricks.

Our first foray into glitch art started with opening video files of the ca. 1901 Bethlehem Steel Administration Building that was recently demolished in Lackawanna, NY in Audacity and looping those jumpy clips in with steady pans of the vacant lots that succeeded it. What we called, BethRot was projected inside a grain elevator at City of Night Buffalo 2013.

Continuing on our theme, and having moved to Washington, DC, we wanted to bring in the iconic buildings of the National Mall and the Smithsonian into our next piece. Data moshing is like melting video. And when buildings get demolished they are kind of melting. So, datamoshing video allows the buildings to melt digitally before they get a chance to be demolished. Imagine if these buildings were demolished. It makes us not take them for granted..

Meagan attended, Riding the Steam: Glitch Art Master Class, taught by Jason Bernagozzi at Squeaky Wheel Media Art Center in Buffalo, NY, and came home with instructions from Jason for data moshing, that we used as inspiration.

Slow F’yaa, Crystal Sanchez and Meagan Baco, 2014.

Here’s how we did it:

• We took video on an iPhone and a Flip Camera
• Export video files to Window Media Files (WMV)
  • Advanced settings: WMV 9 Standard, 2 Pass, Constant Bit Rate 1700 mb/s, Main profiles, key frame and buffer delay both set to 9999, B frame set to 0.
• Open your new WMV files in VLC 0.8.6 and manipulate the player controls to “scrub” the video, like you were DJing. Try repeated clicks, try clicks forward and back to a beat, etc.
• At the same time, open Quicktime 7.6.6 and start a screenrecording (record everything, the same awesomeness will never happen again!)

The moshed video, Slow F’yaa, was part of a larger installation piece at City of Night Buffalo 2014 of a vintage living room that was deceptively cozy while people watched the most iconic buildings of the US melt accompanied by the sounds of a crackling fire.