“A Sloppy Machine, Like Me”
January 9, 2018 4:54 PM Subscribe
The History of Video Synthesizers - from 60s video art to station identification to the invention of the Chyron.
Great post. I guess a lot of the stuff I thought was done with computer aided multi-pass animation stands might have been done on a Scanimate.
posted by bonobothegreat at 5:29 PM on January 9, 2018
posted by bonobothegreat at 5:29 PM on January 9, 2018
Video synths are alive and well. Check this cool shit out. (Epilepsy trigger warning: Rapidly flashing lights on basically all embedded demo videos.)
I had a chance to play a show with someone playing with one of those for visuals during my set and it was a lot of fun. It was also highly distracting, especially since she had an audio feed from my output modulating the signal, so essentially I was also playing the video synth by proxy with my sounds.
The compressed YouTube videos just don't do video synths justice. The colors, patterns, speed and nuance that you can get out of an analog video synth even on a projector or old NTSC CRT tube is just incredible. A lot of the speed, texture and color of an analog video synth just completely breaks video compression codecs and it's really hard to capture to digital video.
I'd love to see an analog video synth on a much higher resolution and wider gamut analog CRT or other display technology. It should actually be pretty easy to hook up an analog synth to, say, an old 21" Trinitron SVGA composite RGB monitor. The frame/sync and scan rates of analog synths are essentially device agnostic.
It's also fascinating to look back at a lot of the retro station ID and bumper graphics and realize that a lot of them aren't digital/raytraced graphics at all, and they aren't practical/optical effects, either, but pure analog video synthesis, perhaps with some optical composite work for titles. Many of the higher quality versions of these motion graphics lasted well into the 80s and 90s, and for a long time many of them vastly exceeded the best digital animation and FX of the day as far as fidelity, aesthetics and technical display metrics like jitter, sawtoothing, aliasing and other unwanted visual artifacts.
There's a bunch of stuff I remember seeing when I was a kid when digital motion graphics were still pretty new that I assumed was just really high quality if uncomplicated or low poly digital graphics until I saw it many years later in demo reels talking about video synths and analog video FX.
posted by loquacious at 5:41 PM on January 9, 2018 [7 favorites]
I had a chance to play a show with someone playing with one of those for visuals during my set and it was a lot of fun. It was also highly distracting, especially since she had an audio feed from my output modulating the signal, so essentially I was also playing the video synth by proxy with my sounds.
The compressed YouTube videos just don't do video synths justice. The colors, patterns, speed and nuance that you can get out of an analog video synth even on a projector or old NTSC CRT tube is just incredible. A lot of the speed, texture and color of an analog video synth just completely breaks video compression codecs and it's really hard to capture to digital video.
I'd love to see an analog video synth on a much higher resolution and wider gamut analog CRT or other display technology. It should actually be pretty easy to hook up an analog synth to, say, an old 21" Trinitron SVGA composite RGB monitor. The frame/sync and scan rates of analog synths are essentially device agnostic.
It's also fascinating to look back at a lot of the retro station ID and bumper graphics and realize that a lot of them aren't digital/raytraced graphics at all, and they aren't practical/optical effects, either, but pure analog video synthesis, perhaps with some optical composite work for titles. Many of the higher quality versions of these motion graphics lasted well into the 80s and 90s, and for a long time many of them vastly exceeded the best digital animation and FX of the day as far as fidelity, aesthetics and technical display metrics like jitter, sawtoothing, aliasing and other unwanted visual artifacts.
There's a bunch of stuff I remember seeing when I was a kid when digital motion graphics were still pretty new that I assumed was just really high quality if uncomplicated or low poly digital graphics until I saw it many years later in demo reels talking about video synths and analog video FX.
posted by loquacious at 5:41 PM on January 9, 2018 [7 favorites]
No mention of LZX?
Holy cow, is that a eurorack style modular video synth? I haven't even heard about that, yet, thank you.
posted by loquacious at 5:53 PM on January 9, 2018
Holy cow, is that a eurorack style modular video synth? I haven't even heard about that, yet, thank you.
posted by loquacious at 5:53 PM on January 9, 2018
Back in my youth, I used to do Chyron name supers for $2 a piece for my dad. Looking back on it, he really ripped me off.
posted by Sphinx at 6:16 PM on January 9, 2018
posted by Sphinx at 6:16 PM on January 9, 2018
Fun fact: The first prototype of the Scanimate-replacing Video Toaster (warning: video contains toaster punks) was built by Brad Carvey, who was the basis for his brother Dana’s popular character Garth Algar.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:16 PM on January 9, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Sys Rq at 6:16 PM on January 9, 2018 [5 favorites]
I always thought "video toaster" was a joke until I read the first article.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:12 PM on January 9, 2018
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:12 PM on January 9, 2018
There was also the Chyron predecessor Dubner machine, made famous by (warning: breathless ott hype) ABC's 20/20 in the '70s. This thing had Roone Arledge written all over it.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:37 PM on January 9, 2018
posted by zaixfeep at 10:37 PM on January 9, 2018
Sys Rq, ah yes, the Toaster, maknng Kiki Stockhammer nerd-famous long before Felicia Day. BTW here's my Garth goto-clip.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:57 PM on January 9, 2018
posted by zaixfeep at 10:57 PM on January 9, 2018
I find it sloppy journalism whenever people jump from Scanimate to Video Toaster and skip the Fairlight CVI, which preceded the Toaster by six years and was gaudily omnipresent in video for a big slice of the eighties .
posted by sonascope at 3:27 AM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by sonascope at 3:27 AM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
Great topic, tnx for posting, but the article is a little light regarding the history of video synthesizers. Here is a more comprehensive overview. Of these, my favorite was the Rutt/Etra RE-4, a scan manipulating device that was a direct descendent of the of the Paik/Abe machine. As the CRT was monochrome it was typically used with some type of multi-level colorizer, such as the Hearn Video Lab.
Modern CGI allows anything one can imagine to be cerated, given enough person hours and render time. But there is a rigid formalism to the process analogous to classic music. By comparison, analog video synthesizers had a limited range of what type of images could be created but using them was more like Jazz -- they were performed in real time. Once all the patches were set up an 18 minute piece could be created in 18 minutes.
It's awesome seeing the renewed interest in these machines and this type of work. In addition to the LZX modular hardware, there are many new software tools emulating the analog synths e.g, Lumen, Signal Culture and even a Rutt/Etra simulator. And the fun of hacking video hardware has appeal to what has become the glitch art community.
Part of this resurgence is being driven by the real time performance requirements of VJs for live electronic dance music shows. But I believe there is also a return to "jazz" with an explicit rejection of CGI and it's smooth splined motion. (Pls forgive the shorthand.) A new generation of video art seeks to is combine all of this with modern desktop tools.
P.S. - loquacious: you're right, posting video synthesis work on YouTube looks awful because the extreme differences in pixels from frame-to-frame breaks the YouTube compression. If you have the bandwidth, bump the material up to UHD resolution and post on Vimeo. Turns out that extra spatial resolution vastly reduces the temporal compression artifacts of the Vimeo compression.
posted by Dean358 at 3:59 AM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
Modern CGI allows anything one can imagine to be cerated, given enough person hours and render time. But there is a rigid formalism to the process analogous to classic music. By comparison, analog video synthesizers had a limited range of what type of images could be created but using them was more like Jazz -- they were performed in real time. Once all the patches were set up an 18 minute piece could be created in 18 minutes.
It's awesome seeing the renewed interest in these machines and this type of work. In addition to the LZX modular hardware, there are many new software tools emulating the analog synths e.g, Lumen, Signal Culture and even a Rutt/Etra simulator. And the fun of hacking video hardware has appeal to what has become the glitch art community.
Part of this resurgence is being driven by the real time performance requirements of VJs for live electronic dance music shows. But I believe there is also a return to "jazz" with an explicit rejection of CGI and it's smooth splined motion. (Pls forgive the shorthand.) A new generation of video art seeks to is combine all of this with modern desktop tools.
P.S. - loquacious: you're right, posting video synthesis work on YouTube looks awful because the extreme differences in pixels from frame-to-frame breaks the YouTube compression. If you have the bandwidth, bump the material up to UHD resolution and post on Vimeo. Turns out that extra spatial resolution vastly reduces the temporal compression artifacts of the Vimeo compression.
posted by Dean358 at 3:59 AM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
I find it sloppy journalism whenever people jump from Scanimate to Video Toaster and skip the Fairlight CVI
Great topic, tnx for posting, but the article is a little light regarding the history of video synthesizers.
Have to agree, a lot of omissions and the fact they didn't even cite LZX in the modern context as the torchbearer for modern analog video synthesis is just plane sloppy research. Dave Jones or Sandin aren't even mentioned anywhere in the article either! It's like
The closing line of the article also is a real "video synthesis is a land of contrasts".
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=48
https://www.facebook.com/groups/VIDEOCIRCUITS/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lzxindustries/
And there's a fairly active scene in LA, I'm on the board of Coaxial Arts Foundation and we've had residencies the with the mentioned JJ Stratford along with Alex Pelly (PELLYVISION), screening/talk with Denise Gallant, and many other artists.
posted by wcfields at 1:41 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
Great topic, tnx for posting, but the article is a little light regarding the history of video synthesizers.
Have to agree, a lot of omissions and the fact they didn't even cite LZX in the modern context as the torchbearer for modern analog video synthesis is just plane sloppy research. Dave Jones or Sandin aren't even mentioned anywhere in the article either! It's like
The closing line of the article also is a real "video synthesis is a land of contrasts".
The artists described above, and countless others, have inspired a new generation raised on these enchanting visuals, and eager to recapture their avant-garde, underground spirit for a new century.The current artistic scene centers around a few communities:
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=48
https://www.facebook.com/groups/VIDEOCIRCUITS/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lzxindustries/
And there's a fairly active scene in LA, I'm on the board of Coaxial Arts Foundation and we've had residencies the with the mentioned JJ Stratford along with Alex Pelly (PELLYVISION), screening/talk with Denise Gallant, and many other artists.
posted by wcfields at 1:41 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
Great topic, tnx for posting, but the article is a little light regarding the history of video synthesizers. Here is a more comprehensive overview. Of these, my favorite was the Rutt/Etra RE-4 vimeo , a scan manipulating device that was a direct descendent of the of the Paik/Abe machine. As the CRT was monochrome it was typically used with some type of multi-level colorizer, such as the Hearn Video Lab.
A little late to this party (new?). I had the pleasure of using a Hearn when I was in college, circa 1976, Buffalo, New York. I believe there was also a Rutt available but I don't recall getting any time on it myself. Finally Woody and Steina Vasulka started work on their synth around that time too. If I recall it was a frame buffer that "made images" using XORs. So no movement, no image.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:42 PM on January 10, 2018
A little late to this party (new?). I had the pleasure of using a Hearn when I was in college, circa 1976, Buffalo, New York. I believe there was also a Rutt available but I don't recall getting any time on it myself. Finally Woody and Steina Vasulka started work on their synth around that time too. If I recall it was a frame buffer that "made images" using XORs. So no movement, no image.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:42 PM on January 10, 2018
I should also add that, years later, I used Isadora to construct a rather nice 2-channel vsynth with some audio-reactive effects. Performed at many dance parties in SF during the late 1990s and early 2000's with it. I also used the too short lived Videodelic, sadly orphaned in the transition from OS9 to OSX.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:48 PM on January 10, 2018
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:48 PM on January 10, 2018
For some reason the emergence of analog video modules gives me modular synthesis envy in a way that the audio stuff doesn't. I think because it's something that's truly new and somewhat mysterious to me, whereas Eurorack is a fancier version of things I can access on software platforms, and of which I have a solid enough technical understanding that they don't have an aura of magic.
posted by atoxyl at 6:55 PM on January 10, 2018
posted by atoxyl at 6:55 PM on January 10, 2018
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