Databending is very different from most artmaking processes I’ve encountered. There is a lack of control I’m not use to, in fact there’s no control. Every photo has a different make up so its hard to really pick and choose what you want to do next, you either keep the edit or you don’t and move on.

Which are your favorites and why?  What strategies worked best for you? Some of my favorites are the ones I made toward the end, that include more color edits than adding in stripes. These include the statue photos I took at the MET, some edits of a portrait I drew and my self-portrait selfie. What worked best for me was minimizing the data size of the photos and doing little edits and subtractions from the code. I found this method much better than using a large file size and deleting large chunks as the only result I got from this method were those stripes you can see in a few of the edits.

For one I’ve never learned about databending before, so this entire process is new information to me. I also learned what process works best for me through a lot of trial and error. Classmates had some very helpful ideas, such as opening the file next to the text and editing while seeing the results, that made the process a lot swifter. I think, again, this is all about trial and error, what worked for me and my photos might not necessarily work for someone else’s. Overall keeping the file size small is what leads to the best success. What was most challenging about this little project was giving up control and just going with the flow of whatever happens to my images. What was most fun was actually seeing the results after getting the hang of it, because I did struggle at first with actually getting any results.

It made me think about how sometimes you have to accept the fact that you can’t control the end results of every project and that’s okay! I also noticed with some of them that they kind of reminded me of abstract paintings, which I thought was neat. I don’t think I would personally know how to get these results in photoshop.  It would be a neat activity to use in the classroom for probably high school age students, possibly in a photo class. I think I would specify to the students the format that worked best for me and have them spend the class playing around with their photos.