This page operates slightly differently to ‘video.html’ because the image doesn’t seem to change until the last few seconds when the datamosh distortion gradually focuses in – for a while, the only thing to watch is the pure movement is water. Purple wasn’t anywhere in the original footage, and only appeared because of the computer breaking the files. I hadn’t included much datamoshed content yet, (mostly because it’s so difficult to work with!), and I thought this would give it an interesting take on the gradual distortion – if unnatural colours (purple) were to appear.

‘datamosh.html’ follows the movement of water as it slowly transitions from the pure footage of the lake to a datamoshed version, combined with the wireframe mesh texture. Neither of the videos, however, operate as videos – in the sense that they don’t have pause, play, rewind, or fast forward buttons – the only options available to the viewer are to watch for the duration of a minute, or close the page. I wanted to play with shapes, composition and rhythm here – the three videos have contrasting movements, and contrasting times in which they ‘expand’ (the breathing square being at its largest, the cropped video becoming fully pixelated), and I was interested in how these would interact with each other in one contained video. ‘video.html’ is consisted of three layers – the lake in the background, the square pixelated lake, and the breathing square overlay. These moments will inevitably cause tensions for the viewer – they may expect to be able to click something, and become frustrated at the lack of hyperlinks, or even think the page is ‘broken’ – I decided that playing with these tensions would create an overall narrative with more depth, questioning further what is a meditative experience and what is not.

Duration, therefore, is important: if the piece is always clickable it could be distracting, and there needed to be moments where there is nothing to click, so that the viewer is made to pause for a moment and simply watch the movement on screen.Īfter studying works like Paul Dolan’s Wireframe Valley (2017), as previously mentioned, I explored the idea that gradual change – not quick movement, like in a GIF – is meditative: the narrative voice in these moments isn’t needed to tell you to relax. In terms of creating a calming an meditative digital environment, I had to consider how interactiveness would lead to relaxation. When planning out the narrative and how exactly the viewer would interact – what would be hyperlinked, where the hyperlinks would lead to, when they’d appear – my tutor suggested that there should be moments in the piece that disrupt the interaction.

Datamosh videos