#informationdump

[existentialoser-blog]

IntPrac Project - “Interrogation”

Here stand the accused.

This die holds special meaning to me, it was the first thing I bought when I first moved to Auckland. I didn’t have much of anything else to my name except what I had in my bag but when I got here I found an interesting store and as I stood there dumbfounded by the models and board games and toys this die caught my eye and I instantly fell in love. I didn’t have money to buy dinner after that.

It encapsulates me as a creative; like the die I too function based on logic, live by random chance, and like the colour red.

The interrogation begins by observing the die.

I don’t own a weighing scale… That’s okay, I have math.

Starting off I wanted to take down the physical characteristics of my object. I unfortunately didn’t have the equipment to do this directly. Rather than seeing this as a hindrance, I saw it as an opportunity to flex my math muscles and put my science to the test.

I was able to take the weight of my dice by accounting for what it’s made of, which in this case is PVC resin, and finding what the relative specific gravity of the material is. I then converted that value into its density in kg/cu.m. Measuring the volume of the dice was relatively simple without using a physical ruler, I just used an online ruler that accounted for the resolution of my monitor. Using both of these values and a little bit of unit conversion, I was able to derive the mass of my dice.

How many sides does a die have? Let’s ask the die.

This was pretty simple, my dice can’t talk back in any means but if you ask it the right questions it is still able to answer.

Using the right pieces for the puzzle:

I wanted to build my object back up with what the data that I was able to collect, I thought it only appropriate to make dice…

Using dice.

This side presented to you in numbers:

I figured out that to recreate my die based on it’s weight I needed 364 dice, I didn’t have 364 dice though so I built my 4 sided die one side at a time. Doing the math that comes up to about a 7x7 square for each side.

The evidence has been tampered with:

As with any interrogation, sometimes the facts are obscured. Mimicking this phenomena would have been pretty simple but I’m a programmer as such I used code to mess with the object, specifically....

Pixel Sorting

This one was fairly straight forward, at least from a programmer’s perspective. Didn’t do much to write my own code, the open source community provides.

http://datamoshing.com/2016/06/16/how-to-glitch-images-using-pixel-sorting/

Hex Editing

This one was not so complex, but incredibly tedious. I had to count how many bits I was replacing so as not to change the overall integrity of the file. I wrote a parsing script in the hopes to make the process a little bit easier on myself, unfortunately that did not work as planned so I ended up manually scrubbing through the hex code.

http://www.artician.com/forum/Glitch-Art-and-Databending-Primer-Part-I-Hex-Editing-and-You-t3799.html

The WordPad effect

This was incredibly easy, just get the right compression type open with Microsoft WordPad and then save. Simple.

http://blog.animalswithinanimals.com/2005/07/wordpad-effect.html

Hex Editing + WordPad effect

Feeling confident that I was able to tackle the first two processes, I challenged myself to utilize both. Same difficulties as hex editing with a little more precision.

http://blog.animalswithinanimals.com/2010/10/advanced-wordpad-editing-explained.html

Equals.

Lo and behold the final outcome. It was surprising to me how close the dimensions of my interrogated dice was to the original considering the rough and ready method I used to measure all of its characteristics. It is fitting however that it ended up the way it did. It isn’t always possible to see the truth of something, often we have to work with the evidence we collect and shape our understanding based on the evidence alone. We don’t always have a clear picture of what is, but we can get close to it bit by bit if we use the right methods.

Why I did what I did:

I dissected the object, gathered information about it piece by piece and from those pieces I formed as a replica as close as possible to the original object. Much like how interrogation is works where interrogators would piece together facts about some event to formulate a clear understanding of what has occurred, I too broke down characteristics of my object to be able to put the pieces back together and see the result. Where I didn’t necessarily learn new paradigms to create my final outcome, I did use my existing knowledge in ways I didn’t even think to use. A programmer wouldn’t normally intentionally break files, it isn’t in their nature, but for art’s sake one must bend the rules sometime.