Corrupting Hope:

A Glitch-Based Approach to doing Digital Visual Research-Creation

Conclusion: Broken Hopes

Throughout this piece, I present glitch as a means of “research-creation" for digital visual studies and have tried to show how glitch might work as a mode of remix for creating insight into the present and future of digital images. While I describe several different phases for practicing research-creation with glitch, I emphasize the importance of incorporating creative play and chance into the process. With image melding, I suggest that we might begin to understand shared visual registers between multiple kinds of media (image, game, film, etc.) and their potential meanings. Additionally, image melding might also expose what images can possibly become (or, perhaps, what they might never become). Where we discover sites for rhetorical and expressive melds, we might also glimpse forecasts of future remixes that only exist as pure potential. The ease and efficacy with which Obama Hope, for example, blends into the environmentalist palette of Sonic Mania may suggest that future rhetors will have an easier time using Obama Hope to speak to these kinds of environmentalist issues as opposed to say the metaphors that DOOM uses to criticize corporate corruption. Perhaps it also envisions a future in which the visual rhetoric surrounding the Obama campaign was used to more aggressively push environmental issues. In this sense, then, image melding is a manifestation of hope--both hope that has come to be, and hope that never will be. Through each image corruption, we can glimpse at a discursive horizon beginning to visualize what might be.

Tutorial

Image meld can be practiced with any two files and OBS plus VLC Player. The steps are a bit complex, so I’ve broken them down into sequences:

Sequence 1: Record your first layer

On a Windows pc (Mac not tested), open OBS 21.1.2, go to “Settings” in the file menu, click “Output,” and under “Recording Format” choose “flv.” Click “Apply,” then click “OK.” Next, open a file (I recommend a game, but it can be a film, set of images, word document, etc. but make sure there is motion involved) for OBS to record. If using multiple monitors, set the file to full screen on another monitor; on a single monitor, make sure the file is full screen before recording. Finally, choose “Display Capture” in the “Sources” box on OBS. Minimize or move OBS from the display and click “Start Recording.” Play the film or game, or scroll through the word document or image set as OBS captures for as long as you like (longer time means more glitches). Once you’re finished click “Stop Recording.”

Sequence 2: Capture glitches in your first layer

Now that you’ve created a flv recording (you can find it by clicking the File menu in OBS and then clicking “Show Recordings”), you’ll need to capture the glitches. To do this, open VLC Player 3.0.1. and select “convert / save” from the File menu. In the window that opens, choose your flv OBS recording, click “Covert / Save.” In the next window that opens, click the box next to “Display the Output.” Before clicking start, open up OBS again and set it to start recording the window that has VLC player open. Be sure that OBS is set to record in mp4, not flv. Click record, then return to VLC player and, after choosing your “destination file,” click “start.” If you’re on a single monitor, OBS should be minimized and recording the full screen VLC player; If you’re using multiple monitors, make sure OBS is capturing the monitor with VLC player full screen. This will simultaneously play and capture your glitched video. Be sure to save the mp4 file that OBS provides and delete the converted video provided by VLC player.

Sequence 3: Add another layer

Next, we perform the same steps but introduce another file into the recording. Locate the mp4 file that you’ve saved from OBS and open this file in VLC player. Set OBS to again capture VLC player, but be sure to set it back to flv. Before we click Record on OBS or Play on VLC player, open the image you want to meld in a borderless image viewer like Honeyview. Once you click record and play, you’ll drag this image over the video playing on VLC player. Since OBS is capturing a display and not a specific window, it will record both the movement of the image as well as the document/game/film/images/etc. playing in the background. Click “Start Recording” on OBS, then click the play arrow in VLC player and being dragging the image all over the display window that VLC is playing the recording on. Don’t worry if you accidentally minimize the window or close windows as these can be re-opened and will create additional interesting effects in your final recording! Once you are finished, click “Stop Recording.”

Sequence 4: Check your image meld

Now that you’ve got an flv file of your video and your image, follow Sequence 2 again. Open VLC player and select “convert / save” from the File menu. In the window that opens, choose your newly created flv OBS recording, click “Covert / Save.” In the next window that opens, click the box next to “Display the Output.” Before clicking start, open up OBS again and set it to start recording the window that has VLC player open. Be sure that OBS is set to record in mp4, not flv. Click record, then return to VLC player and, after choosing your “destination file,” click “start.” If you’re on a single monitor, OBS should be minimized and recording the full screen VLC player; If you’re using multiple monitors, make sure OBS is capturing the monitor with VLC player full screen. This will simultaneously play and capture your glitched video. Be sure to save the mp4 file that OBS provides and delete the converted video provided by VLC player.

Now you should have a strange mp4 image meld. You can continue to add layers and more images by continually following this process: capture mp4 as flv, play flv while dragging image around, capture flv as mp4, repeat. Experiment with different kinds of images, or drag a video over another video.

Works Cited