Today I’d like to make the proposal that the aesthetics of “datamoshing” are kinda very psychedelic.
“Datamoshing” is the hip term for the effects achieved by removing keyframes from a videofile. It’s actually a very basic artisic technique in the tradion of randomness and the surfacing display of artistic means. What resurfaces here from the subconscious of the means of production are compression artefacts, objects born from the everyday algorithms of heavy data compression. The focus on compression artefacts sets them apart from other glitch aesthetics.
Not unlike a Rorschach test or psychedelic visuals these alien everyday compression artefacts are capable of expression. They have an emotional quality; they are anarchic smugglers on the border between conscious and subconscious.
The video above associates the compression artefacts with a certain melancholy. It’s an interesting construction of things passed since early objects of desire from 80s tv commercials and videogames are fused with the involuntary gestures of data compression from the internets early days of videostreaming. Just like a search of lost rad time with youtube.
Don’t miss those other two videos by eddie whelan! They are beautiful and no less rad executions of controlled randomness.
The Daily Psychedelic Video 