Sonic Glitch GIFs Are Music to Our Ears

Today's abundant landscape of file formats presents artists with the ability to tweak digital artworks all the way down to their individual bits and pixels. In the case of glitch art, this has long been a source of both distraction and delight, as selecting the right codec or extension can take hours but ultimately result in the perfect expression of an artist's vision.

In the case of Tumblr and SoundCloud artist Dawnia Carney, a.k.a., Enad Yenrac, the manipulation of video and images is best expressed through an unlikely medium—sound. By sending images through sound processing softwares, effectively turning pictures into sound, and then transcoding those results back into images, Carney creates gorgeous glitch GIFs of "sonified" art. Below, check out the sound file that created the above GIF:

With data acting as notes, and digital image and sound editors as her bow and strings, Carney's glitch artworks grant viewers and listeners alike an audiovisual ensemble of elegant errors. To begin, he converts .RAW image data into audio files. Then, using a new process of “planar shifting,” the artist converts these tunes back into images, creating the ecstatic visuals seen here. Experienced side-by-side, the subtle rhythms of the artist’s data tunes provide the perfect contrast to the colorful, frantic pixel dances of her GIFs.

See more of Carney's original GIF artworks created from sound files, and listen to the "songs" they were created from, below:

Check out more of the artist’s work on Soundcloud and on Tumblr.

Related:

Here's What Happens When You Edit Photos Like Music

Phillip Stearns Is Turning Digital Glitches Into Warm Blankets

Sound Effects Create Bold Glitch Art Patterns

Update: This article has been updated to properly reflect the artist Dawnia Carney's name and pronouns.