BLOG: Andrew Benson has been perfecting his craft for years, taking his emphasis from abstract iconic imagery to the facemelt style you see here.
Using a combination of feedback, motion-tracking, and animation, all in realtime. (We apologize for our earlier misstatement that Benson uses datamoshing. If you’re not familiar with datamoshing or artefact in general, it is an artistic application of hyper data compression, wherein media is distorted both by simplifying the compression rate and at the same time interleaving two or more videos. While it appears similar to Benson’s work, his is much more about realtime improving, and is not the same. Tune in next week for some actual datamosh.)
I appreciate you posting my videos on this blog. I’m a big LiquidTV fan from way back. Unfortunately, the technical info here isn’t accurate to the way I work. I don’t do file-glitches like datamoshing, as I’ve never been satisfied with the black-box nature of that type of work. For these videos, I worked exclusively in realtime processes, using a combination of video feedback, color effects, motion-tracking, OpenGL animation/drawing, and compositing. The performative and improvisational aspect to how I work with software is an important part of my process, and relates to live video work I do as well. I hope that all makes sense. I’d be happy to share more details of this with anyone who is interested.