Monster Movie

Takeshi Murata

Takeshi Murata is currently one of my favorite digital media artists. I was introduced to his work through his piece “Monster Movie.” I’ve always found glitching to be a process that can produce surprisingly beautiful and poetic results. “Monster Movie” utilizes datamoshing, a process that takes advantage of video compression algorithms, to form beautiful colors and fluidity. I also appreciate that it doesn’t completely remove visibility from the original found B-Movie footage. I found the music to also be a really effective element; it changes my emotions toward the piece by adding aggression which is juxtaposed by the visuals which might be interpreted as peaceful otherwise. I’m especially impressed by this piece as I often work with datamoshing but struggle to recreate the same palette and smoothness. Murata was inspired by Raphael Montañez Ortiz’s piece “Golf.” Rather than punching holes into the film stock, he “punches holes” into the digital file.  I find that both of these artists use found footage in a transformative way that still allows for artistic decisions rather than solely relying on the possibly randomized output of a software or destructive process.