Synthetic Divinity

Go check out Tory Starbuck's Vimeo here for more on this

"Synthetic Divinity was a St. Louis cable television show in 1994-1996. It was abstract, surreal, science fiction video art created by Tory, Enero, and Bruce Wulff. Sasha Feline was in part of this. Other friends and members of neXtrAdio helped and the soundtrack was always created by neXtrAdio. The muzik was usually from the live improvisations that took place on Tory's KDHX radio show, Nocturnal Designs. Doc Mabuse, Tom Sutter, Perry Emge were in the band and helped with filming, acting and ideas."

DIY Micro Video Transmitter Workshop

on the 17th of this fine month I attended a DIY micro video transmitter workshop hosted by Ryan Jordan and run by Kyle Evans of Cracked Ray Tube, The design was based on one produced by Tetsuo Kogawa and continually developed as part of his practice. Kyle also uses this circuit in his work to great effect to derive perfectly imperfect images and abstract raw colour video signal in to new jagged forms. Everyone at the workshop got to make and try a transmitter and we even used two at once. The design is really simple and purposefully unstable to allow artistic exploitation of it's properties.

anyone with limited soldering skills could produce one of these devices easily and it was great fun tuning it in and watching the results. The construction is also beautifully simple using the copper coated PCB material a ground plane and attaching 'tags' to the surface using more PCB material make construction fast simple and relatively interference free. If you can't get to a workshop run by Kyle (which I would recommend due to the fun and social aspect and great documentation alone) then don't fret as the low parts count  make this easy to source and build on your own. 

I was sad not to be able to stay for the live performance by Kyle,  Ryan and a host of others but alas I was halfway though moving house :<

what follow are some bad phone pics 

New Lucky PDF TV

new Lucky PDF type thing coming soon I'm doing interstitial bits and titles for some episodes as well as some live stuff first live broadcast is on Saturday 16 October at 5pm link

TV Sculpture

here is a nice shot of some stacked TVs from goreland on flickr

DIY TV Transmitter

Here is one of the many projects available online to build your own low powered TV transmitter. This instructable also details a multitude of different ways to go about making more powerful transmitters.

Modern Mechanix is a blog with some interesting article scans of obsolete technology and it has a good TV/video section here the rest is good for a laugh as well!

heres my favorite

Early Television History

Television as a medium has (much like radio did for audio arts) been influential beyond its content the method of reception, the the qualities of the images and the collective experience have effected video and visual art for anyone who came in to contact with it. It's interesting then that the medium supplanting (or maybe incorporating) television (the internet) allows us to look back at it's history and machinery. If you are interested in this sort of thing then I urge you to visit the Early Television Museum website

and If you live in London there is always The British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum in West Dulwich which I have never been to but always wanted to check out

I'm working on a fuller list of interesting TV history websites and  museums as there are loads but ill save that for a later post when it's more complete!

Vinyl Video

So here is an interesting project Vinyl Video its basically a system that converts video signals in to audio that can be recorded on to a vinyl record and played back on a regular television. I imagine it uses very similar technology to the Fisher-Price Pixelvision Camerea which contains a custom integrated circuit the Sanyo LA 7306M more info here. While the Vinyl Video player is very cool it will set you back a Hefty €4500 which seams silly when you could achieve the same effect by buying a Pixelvision camera (I got mine for £30) and recoding the video signal off as audio getting that cut to vinyl (under £100) and playing it back through the Pixelvision to your TV set, still it's nice to see such a complex project online.

Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter

Not only was the TV typewriter a low cost video text generator it was influential in the early computer hobby world here are some interesting links, bytecollector, classiccmp, swtpc. There were also later pre built commercial models available... the man with the plans Don's pages here

DIY Elektor VHF/UHF TV Modulator

Heres a cool VHF/UHF TV modulator from the January I985 issue of Elektor magazine useful for converting signals link here, now I just need to find a demodulator circuit.

have fun!

Peter Donebauer & The Videokalos

I always thought that most video synthesizers were a product of 1970s American experimental film and video art but I'm finding more and more instances of project based in other countries. Here is a synthesizer from Britain! The Videokalos was developed in 1975 and 1976 by Peter Donebauer (a pioneer of british video art) with help from ex EMS engineer Richard Monkhouse who also developed The Videosizer and the Spectre. There are some excellent essays and information about it and video art in general on Peters site so I wont repeat it here go there!

Dale Heatherington's DIY TV and Video Projects

here is a very cool website with a list of projects Dale Heatherington cooked up in his youth including a video recorder an image scanner and various TV transmitters

My 4 Transistor Video Synth

Heres is a little 4 transistor circuit kludged together from spare components and a 70s hobby magazine article it plugs straight in to the arial socket of you old unused TVs I'm thinking of trying to track down the original author of the article to ask him if I can release it as a kit! sorry there's no sound on the vid but my mixer is broken.

Scanimate Letter H

From the youtbe description by NantoVision


"1977, a neat little segment about the letter H, narrated by Luis (Emilio Delgado) and a little girl named Heather. With no new episodes of The Electric Company being made that year, I guess CTW had to think of something else to do with their trusty Scanimate machine. Personally, I wish they had used it more."





more on the scanimate here and here