Gameplay Journal #6 — All About Glitch
I wanted to focus this weeks journal on a movie you presented to us last week, Takeshi Murata’s Monster Movie. I found that glitch particularly compelling because it was the first time I associated that type and style of media to glitching — I had never thought of it in that way before.
When first experiencing the movie, I was overwhelmed by the psychadelic-like attributes of the video and audio. The audio seemed to be random noises but arranged in somewhat of a pattern so that eventually it created a rhytmic pattern and beat. The mixing and moshing of the pixels in the video seem to disintegrate and move in random ways at first. After watching many times, it seems as if the pixels follow the direction they were headed in until a new pixel replaces it. Even this attempt at trying to explain what is happening is not sufficient, because I am trying to say the arrangement is both random and recognizable as a pattern at the same time.
The experience provides the viewer the opportunity to think about the processess that is creating the experience. This allows users to focus on their “awareness of the materiality and infrastructure of audiovisual media’ and to “recognize it as an intended feature of the work, and not as an actual technical failure.” (Ferreira, pg 115) What did the artist/hacker have to change in order to achieve these effects? Are they reproducable? Apparently Murata achieved these effects in Monster Movie by “datamoshing and compression” (Ferreira, pg 114).
There is one particular point (1:12) where I get a sense of motion or technology sickness. The movement of the scene and pixels makes my brain think that I am moving even though I am not, and leaves me with a weird feeling and sensation.
I’m not sure where the original film and audio come from, but I am sure that Takeshi Murata has created something entirely different from his glitch techniques.
Ferreira, Pedro, and Luisa Ribas. “Post-Digital Aesthetics in Contemporary Audiovisual Art.” Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, 2020, pp. 111–124