glitch art with audacity

18 sept 2026, 10:28pm

just recently i learnt the art of databending by manipulating an image file in audio format using audacity! while this won't be a full, in-depth tutorial or anything outright, i'll still be talking about the key steps to setting up for databending in hopes that others will try it out :-]

i used this video guide and this article from 2009 throughout my process, so check those out if you're interested ^o^

my very first databending result!

to start off, databending with audacity requires the image to be in an uncompressed format such as either .bmp or .tif, and depending on which you choose, the outcome will also be slightly different, but most of mine i've used bmp.i've tried both formats but idk the differences, although that's probably because i didn't try it on the same image. either way i just use bmp for no particular reason

i've also used imagemagick commands in cli to convert my images, but ms paint allows for saving images in bmp format. (i didn't know that before this :-o !)

i'm using audacity v3.0.0, which i've downloaded from this page with older versions, because audacity 4 doesn't allow importing images as raw data anymore as far as i've tried. i don't think you need to go as far back to version 3.0, but it works for me so i'm sticking with it

for demonstration purposes i will be using this image!

doesn't it look like a liminal photo?? wow!!

all i have to do to get it into audacity is to click file > import > raw data, then select my file! a menu will pop up, and most of the time all you need to change is the "encoding" to u-law. the channels should also be "1 channel (mono)", but most of the time this is already set. it should then appear into the editor as a very pleasant sound wave.. but make sure to turn the volume down.

as a general rule of thumb, i try not to touch the first 5-ish seconds of the start and end of the audio file, because that's where the header of the image file is, and editing it will corrupt the whole thing. sometimes i don't realise i've accidentally messed with those important sections and it'll export corrupted. yay! (but this is why you always save new files, never over your original one!!)

now i select a random section of the sound wave, then go to "effects" in the top bar and select "echo"! just for this i leave the additional settings at the default value; i still haven't fully discovered what each one does yet. the wave should change a bit, and this means my image has been edited!

usually with databending, since you can't see the output immediately as you edit, a good practice is to save incrementally for every edit you make to the file. a lot of databending guides will recommend you document the values of the settings you use for each effect you apply, as well as name the file with the corresponding effect you just used, mostly so you can recreate similar effects. for me, i'm lazy and i like to wing things, so the most i do is name my files the effect name and leave it as is lol.

to save a file, just go to file > export > export audio, or use the shortcut ctrl+shift+e. under "save as type" set it as other uncompressed files, change the header to "raw (header-less)" and the encoding to u-law, just as we did when importing. then the file name should end with bmp, or whatever file extension you imported with. so for this i've named mine echo.bmp. easy!

and the first image below is the result! aside from effects, you can cut and paste sections of the file too, which becomes the next image! it just shifts strips of the image with a bit of colour change which is cool to play around with. with just two edits it's already looking super cool, and with more effects it'll get glitchier and glitchier. some might like to leave it at here; i personally enjoy corrupting my images until it's practically an unrecognisable smoothie of pixels. very awesome :-)

one problem i've encountered that i've yet to resolve is using effects that change the length of the audio, such as speed, tempo, or paulstretch. i think this messes with the formatting somehow but i've seen others do it, so it's definitely possible. i might just be a little dumb. maybe it's my audacity version..

this guide has a short list and explanation of what some effects do, but ultimately i just like to play around with everything and be surprised at the results. i think it's really fun tweaking parameters and seeing the result from it. it's a nice surprise every time :o)

below are some more of my experiments with databending!

i've also tried using a hex editor to edit jpegs, but either i'm not fully understanding how to properly corrupt the images or it's actually much more difficult to make cool effects using a hex editor. most of the time i get solid colour changes or a whole section of the image goes grey, so i've given up on that for now and will be messing around more with audacity until i figure something out.

something i'd also like to try sometime is datamoshing! it's one of the coolest video effects and i'm so down to try it out one day. just need to find a tutorial which should take like 5 seconds