my own databending experiments

so, stAllio's databending post finally inspired me to try my hand at it.

since the toast is on his way back here, and i recently rediscovered some old digicam pics (nearly two years old, some of them), i thought i'd use one of him for the experiment.

here's the original:

(no, no experimenting done as yet: that's how he looks! ;)

after quite a bit of futzing around, i got this out:

what i did was:

open the jpg in photoshop
save the image as a tif
changed the extension to "txt" and opened it in wordpad
changed a random character (i think a "K" to a "J")
saved and closed wordpad
changed the extension back to tif and opened the image in ms paint
saved the image as a bmp

i was having a lot of trouble initally, but the key was to work with tif or bmp. according to stAllio!, jpg files are tougher to deal with, as they break easily.

UPDATE: syntax took a whack at it too:

sweet. i have to try this out some more.

UPDATE #2: i was just showing someone what i was talking about, and did this one:

it's just converted to bmp, opened in wordpad and saved. syntax was right; simply opening it in wordpad is enough to goof it up.

UPDATE #3: a couple more.

using Microsoft Word, i got this one:

if you can't see that, here it is in jpg form:

this procedure:

jpg » bmp
bmp open in ms word
ms word saved as plain txt (with bmp extension)

seemed simple, and it opened fine in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (which i hate) but would not display in IE6, and so i couldn't be sure about uploading it for you all to see (it works in firefox).

i had to use WP&FV to save it as a jpg for the above image to show in IE6.

in addition to this, i used worpad on the bmp (before conversion) and, predictably, got this one:

as you can see, it's got the ms word warp as before, but with the additional "wordpad effect", as the earlier bends had.

9 Comment(s):

stAllio!: you shouldn't have to rename the file. just open wordpad, set your filetype to "all", and select a file to open.

7/11/2005 1:31 AM

dj empirical: no, you're right, but i'd rather do that and just hit enter than click through start » programs » accessories » wordpad. :)

7/11/2005 8:27 AM

stAllio!: that makes sense if you're only bending one file, but i like to leave my applications open so i can bend (and re-bend) several (or a bunch) of files in one session.

7/11/2005 7:32 PM

dj empirical: i was doing well to get one! :D

7/11/2005 7:59 PM

arratik: sweet! looks a bit like one of the band photos on the cover of public image ltd.'s second edition album.

7/12/2005 10:15 AM

arratik: honestly, you probably didn't do much to the file by changing one of the characters - i think just opening the file in wordpad will insert all sorts of crap like line breaks into the file, causing it to go kablewey. i've noticed that this is the case with uncompressed formats, like tiff and bmp. psd files... eh. can't say i've had much luck with 'em using the wordpad method, but try converting that pic of mcdeviltoast into a psd and then run it through some audio effects in cool edit pro... it'll sound good, too. :)

oh, here's my whack at that toast pic...

7/12/2005 11:14 AM

stAllio!: yeah, replacing one character is definitely not enough to corrupt an uncompressed image that severely. all that would do would create a minor pixel shift (and possibly color shift).

and this is another reason why i like using wave editors for image-bending: opening a file "as raw" and then re-saving does not alter the file in any way. (of course, in cases like this, you could say it's a good thing that wordpad is introducing all that junk data, but if you were working with a more volatile format it could be very bad: i'm not surprised that jpeg- or psd-bending experiments in wordpad fail so often. for example, i just tried opening that jpg in wordpad and re-saving, and that completely broke the file. [note that this is not necessarily true for msword, just wordpad])

7/12/2005 1:58 PM

stAllio!: i examine this phenomenon (i'm calling it "the wordpad effect") in more detail on my blog here and especially here

7/12/2005 3:25 PM

arratik: check this out

this is the original pic, converted into a psd file using the GIMP 2.2.6, opened as raw (interpreted as a 16-bit mono 44100khz wav) in cool edit pro, with reverb and a preset "get off the phone!" filter applied to a few random sections of the resulting waveform.

7/12/2005 8:02 PM