Resources for First Year Media Art Course 2025

The attached pages give general advice on all the tools and techniques that we cover in the First Year Media Art course as a refresher for anyone using them out of class time.

1 Glitching digital Images
- 1.1 Audacity
- 1.2 File Format
- 1.3 Converting file Formats
- 1.4 Text Glitching
2 Recursion and Feedback loops

Glitching digital Images

Glitching refers to digitally breaking a file in a way that the original content of the file is still partially discernible. The most common way of doing this is using programs in ways they weren't intended to be used. The video linked is a step by step guide to editing digital images with audacity and text edit.

https://curtin-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/266172f_curtin_edu_au/ERuxWAPiL_5HuaGu9RELIGsBnpEsqI0f3qlJo178L83lTw?nav=eyJyZWZlcnJhbEluZm8iOnsicmVmZXJyYWxBcHAiOiJPbmVEcml2ZUZvckJ1c2luZXNzIiwicmVmZXJyYWxBcHBQbGF0Zm9ybSI6IldlYiIsInJlZmVycmFsTW9kZSI6InZpZXciLCJyZWZlcnJhbFZpZXciOiJNeUZpbGVzTGlua0NvcHkifX0&e=UxbmuG

Audacity

Audacity is a free sound editing program, we use it to manipulate digital image files.

Audacity Version 3.4.0 - https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity-old.html?dwl=audacity-macOS-3.6.3-x86_64.dmg

V3.4.0 allows us to export the sound files as BMP images. Newer versions of Audacity required us to save the image as a RAW file, open it in a photo viewer (like Mac Preview or Microsoft photos) and screen shot the edited image.

File Format

BMP files work the most consistently with both audacity and text edit. You can choose to use JPGS files instead, however this will take more experimentation and patience to get consistent results. I recommend starting with BMP.

Converting file Formats

In class we use Photoshop to convert images from PNG/JPG/GIF to BMP. There are online image converters, I use adobe as it gives me more control over the image. The exception to this rule is RAW files that have been exported from Audacity, photoshop often destroys these files so we need to open them in a basic image viewer (like Mac Preview or Microsoft photos), screen shot the image, then convert the screen shot from PNG to BMP in photoshop.

Text Glitching

Text glitching manipulates the image file by altering the raw unicode characters used to store the pixel information. For this we use Text edit on Mac or Notepad on windows, these are raw text editing programs, that will allow you to view and edit text without formatting. Different file types use different compression algorithms which vary the way the image is stored, this results in different patterns of characters.

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