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 

Video Transmitter Experiments

So I found this old transistor set on the way home from a friends house a while ago and I had already got a few transmitters in my piles of junk, so I thought I would test them out and try some feedback. To my amazement the transmitter would invert the image on some settings. I also played around with my Audio to video circuit in to the transmitter at one point and made this "cool" montage poster  

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.

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!

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