The goal of our research was to make use of a digital-to-analog converter box to create a responsive datamoshing tool that would provide artists with a level of control over alterations applied to an incoming digital television broadcast signal. Building on the work of early synthesising artists, as well as contemporary datamoshing practices, we employed three techniques — software hacking of the box’s built code, circuit-bending of the box’s circuitry, and external interruption of the electrical components that were hardwired to the boxes — in an attempt to discern if a complex DTV broadcast signal could be datamoshed in real time. Our research yielded a number of significant findings. Most significantly, we discovered that low frequency is key to datamoshing the DTV signal. Low-frequency interruptions applied to the incoming high-frequency DTV signal cause it to behave in a manner analogous to dropping I-frames in hex editing; low-frequency applications offset the timing of the incoming signal, causing gaps in video frames before the timing system could find them and thereby producing characteristic datamoshing effects.

The ability to pause the code, thereby preventing the converter box from resyncing the video, is another a key finding. If we had not been able to ‘free’ the incoming broadcast signal from the resync command, our research would have concluded with the knowledge that low-frequency vibrations applied to the converter box’s TV tuner would datamosh the incoming image, without yielding a method to leverage this quality. We entered our investigation with the notion that manipulating the code that operated the converter box would be the key to datamoshing the encoded DTV signal. Although it was vital that we were able to pause resynching in the converter box to consistently apply low-frequency interruptions to the incoming broadcast signal, our investigations did not generate much in terms of interesting software manipulations to the broadcast image. Despite the fact that the transmission carries encoded images, it is still comprised of electromagnetic signals that respond to electronic disturbances. Our research demonstrates that while the digital broadcast signal may be obscured by code, it is still available as artistic material despite the math which controls its behavior as it makes its way to the television screen.

The creation of a responsive datamoshing system is perhaps the most impactful outcome of our research. As an artistic material for datamoshing, the incoming signal is more flexible than code, allowing for the creation of a variable system that artists can use to more precisely shape the application of datamoshing to the image. Hex editing is both incredibly chance-based and imprecise; an artist can edit and re-edit the underlying code of a digital video to achieve a greater datamoshing effect, but cannot exert any actual control over the degree to which datamoshing might take place. The ability to turn a potentiometer up or down and sweep through a range of low-frequency values provides the artist with a range of aesthetic choices that allow for a responsive relationship with the incoming broadcast image, live and in real time. The potential of this sort of responsive aesthetics can perhaps be best illustrated via the audio datamoshing capacity of the converter box. By applying low-frequency resistors to the audio pin during an incoming news broadcast, for example, a newscaster’s voice could be utilised to essentially datamosh her own image to different degrees, effects and meanings as the news is being transmitted in real time.

Recognising the potential of the electronic signal as artistic material, Nam June Paik presciently stated in 1965 that ‘someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semi-conductors as they work today with brushes, junk and violins.’ Synthesising artists, building on early analog signal interventions by pioneering video artists like Paik, Reibak, and Tambellini, created variable systems which enabled artists to modulate variations in frequency, amplitude, and phase to isolate and control the level of distortion applied to the video image in real time. Through their manipulations of I-frames, datamoshing artists similarly work with code to apply a range of painterly-like alterations to the digital video image. Our use of a digital-to-analog converter box — in which low-frequency capacitors and resistors, once again, play key roles — both builds upon and pays homage to the work of these artists. We look forward to seeing how other artists might enhance and utilise the simple system we created.