​​Brief History of Early Cinema and discover Data-moshing. Resources to try it yourself.

Data moshing is a new form of digital art that defines the boundaries and limitations of traditional media. It is a process in which multiple images and videos are artistically merged together to create a new collage. Did people who made Early cinema know that this is how the art form would evolve? Before I delete this material from my hard disk I'm sharing a brief history of Cinema and a few things that I learned at NID.

This article covers - 

 

• a brief history of early cinema.

• what is data moshing? 

• Story of Mosh (NFT) 

• My earlier experiments

 

The Brief History of Early Cinema

 

While the real-life frontiers of science and technology have opened up our minds to amazing discoveries and advancements, our minds have also been re-opened to how some of these discoveries are represented visually. Early cinema could be described as early forms of art merging both.

 

Early films were essentially illustrations made from photographs taken from motion pictures. In some ways, the term “picture show” was used as a marketing term. Initially, the film was very long, which created a great deal of physical mass. The viewer would often be seated at a very close distance and so would be in the direct line of fire of the projector light, which created a much smaller image and more blurry vision.

 

Few milestones of early cinema you can enjoy.

 1899- This film was a big deal for its time. before this film cinema was just documenting events, but this is an early example of storytelling.

1900 - Grandma’s reading glasses - this is the first example where point of view was used.

1900-Let me dream again - This is the first time off-focusing was used to integrate shots.

1900- What it feels to be run over - Seriously this is the kind of stuff that excited people back then. Imagine what will happen if we show them a Michel bay film.

1900 - The explosion of a motor vehicle. This is a great early example of replacing elements in the frame by keeping the camera steady. They so chill about dead bodies.

1906- A visit to peek Fream and Co.’s Biscuit Works, this is arguably the first documentary 

I will keep exploring more about early cinema, with my future posts as and if it is relevant. Feel free to share your knowledge about early cinema in the comments. 

 

What is data moshing?

Data moshing is the art of taking two or more pictures and combining them to create a new composition or visual. Today there are many ways to do so, but the one I explored is by Paketa. His Patreon is a great source for TDdevelopers. 

I’ve shared some of my data mosh artworks, which I made using footage from early cinema. 

Story of mosh (available as NFT)

This is a series of artworks I made by editing and moshing this footage - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIi2I...

Find this post on Insta

"Don't mosh me" -

"Where is the Mosh ?"

"Want some mosh?"

"Take some Mosh"

This is what happens when you combine early cinema with video effects. It's called data mosh, and it's way more fun than it sounds!

 

Her smell is another artwork that is being traded as NFT on Foundation. 

Some of my earlier experiments were done with after effects using the time displace effect. In this case, the video is being moshed with itself. 

"I dreamt I was flying to Vancouver"

"Party today"

Conclusion

 There are many implementations of the technique from the various Animated art forms to Digital video games. Data moshing is robust, easy to integrate, and can make an interesting style of art for some really strange and unusual projects. Most editing and visual effects applications will let you data mosh in one way or another.

My name is Cai. I’m a visual artist, constantly exploring different mediums of storytelling. I appreciate your feedback and see my work here. This tweet describes my life

You can get in touch with me on Twitter or Instagram.