In his assessment of the flexibility of the electronic image, Vasulka is, of course, talking about the analog video signal. The digital video signal carries more complex data than its analog counterpart. For instance, digital broadcast television, or DTV, images are compressed, encoded, and multiplexed, with multiple compressed channels of programming travelling within a single frequency range.^[1]  Once the digital broadcast signal arrives at its destination, the receiving television set cannot obtain the data directly; a television tuner must first decode the broadcast signal via a circuit board and onboard software. Given the complexity of the digital broadcast transmission, and the extra layers of code and data simultaneously transmitted and received, we kept Yvonne Spielmann’s warning at the forefront as we began our research:

It is important to keep in mind here that, as opposed to the analog processing of signals in real time where shape and pattern of video are altered by frequency and voltage, digital processes require coding and commands in the computer through mathematical functions. (507)

In an attempt to discern how to disrupt a digital broadcast signal that carries encoded information live and in real-time, we turned our attention to datamoshing artists intervening into the code of digital video. Datamoshing can best be described as an exploitation and interruption of the compression algorithms that comprise digital video, resulting in visual and/or auditory distortion and alteration of the image.^[2] In datamoshing, pre-recorded and compressed digital video is disrupted via a tedious process known as hex editing in which an artist accesses the code underlying a digital video and removes the reference frames, or I-frames, that store image data.^[3] If the code that defines the I-frame as a reference is removed, the software can no longer correctly predict the images that follow. This leads to datamoshing, as pixels slam from one frame of video into the next (hence the ‘moshing’ effect), producing bright, over-saturated colours, pixel eruption, and a smearing of the image that produces a painterly-like quality. Artists have also developed applications, or apps, that automate I-frame removal. Two early examples would include Databender (2014) by Brandon Barber, and Gold Mosh by Samuel H. Goldstein (2013), which generate the same visual effects as hex editing.

While hex editing and automated apps can produce stunning imagery, real-time datamoshing — a digital corollary to earlier live video synthesising performances — remained the genre’s Holy Grail. In 2008, Eric Souther determined that real-time datamoshing of digital video was possible using the free, open source VLC media player; rhythmically clicking within the application’s video playbar produced typical datamoshing effects, including over-saturated colours, pixel eruption and a smearing of the image.^[4] As Jason Bernagozzi notes, ‘the more times you click that same area of the playbar the image will repeat and will appear to shed a history of video “skins” […] The more you do this, the more the colour will saturate and change or datamoshing will occur’ (27). Datamoshing also occurs by simply dragging and holding the playhead on the video playbar and slowly scrubbing across the timeline. While most media player software programmes have incorporated anti-glitch measures to guard against such errors, each new version of VLC datamoshes video files differently, a quirk of the software that artists can leverage according to their own aesthetic preferences.