
The History of Video Synthesizers - rcarmo
https://wearethemutants.com/2018/01/09/a-sloppy-machine-like-me-the-history-of-video-synthesizers/
======
classichasclass
Scanimation has always had a huge fascination for me. Not least because
Scanimated stuff was in vogue when I was a kid, but their analogue and
arguably intentionally imprecise means of production means you never got the
same effect twice and every scene was unique. I purchased Scanimate DVD-1 way
back when and it not only has a great selection of ads and some other feature
productions, but some tidbits on production methods and what actually went
into the technology. You can get it here (not involved, just a satisfied
customer):
[http://www.scanimate.com/DVD1.html](http://www.scanimate.com/DVD1.html)

I think some of the same applies to modern CGI compared to the old blood-
sweat-film-and-tears visual effects methods, which doesn't always yield a
better result, and sometimes comes off as soulless.

~~~
jhallenworld
One scanimate machine is still running, see:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxc3mKqKTk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxc3mKqKTk)

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0xbadf00d
On the subject of Video Synths - Teenage Engineering have a preview of their
OP-Z:

[https://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-z](https://www.teenageengineering.com/products/op-z)

Based on their previous offerings I am very excited to see how this turns out
(and a little worried for my bank balance)

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anigbrowl
No mention of Jeff Minter?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelia_(light_synthesizer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelia_\(light_synthesizer\))

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AHTERIX5000
Very fascinating machines indeed and of course there are software available to
mimic video synth stacks like Lumen and Cathodemer ([http://lumen-
app.com](http://lumen-app.com),
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/697860/Cathodemer](http://store.steampowered.com/app/697860/Cathodemer))

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smogcutter
My favorite is Dan Sandin's analogue video synth, from U of I Chicago circa
1971:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qh6jRzjmcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qh6jRzjmcY)

He distributed the schematics free under a "copy it right" philosophy: you had
his blessing as long as you didn't mess around with the schematics. All you
had to do was send him a video tape asking for a copy, and he'd put them in
the mail. If you had questions? Send another tape.

Ten or so years ago I emailed him and got a copy when I couldn't find them on
google. They're fantastic, all hand drawn circuit diagrams and pcb layouts.
Unfortunately some of the more important ICs are long out of production, and
finding suitable replacements is beyond my skill. Not only that, the board he
used to generate NTSC color was actually pulled from a specific model of video
camera. To reproduce it today you'd have to either design a replacement from
scratch or find a different approach.

~~~
robotdad
I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 90s, they
had a Sandain image processor in the video lab then. I spent many all nighters
patching that thing. It was actually part of why I wanted to go there. Someday
I’ll have to get the VHS of that stuff into a digital format.

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pasta
If you like this and you like programming you might want to take a look at
Pure Data (or Max/MSP).

It's math to sound/video output by dragging inputs to outputs.

A lot of great stuff it made by such software.

~~~
DonHopkins
Nato.0+55+3d (released in 1999) was an amazing but notorious extension for Max
that enabled live programming of real time video manipulation, networking and
display.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nato.0%2B55%2B3d](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nato.0%2B55%2B3d)

"At the time of its release (the summer of 1999), NATO.0+55+3d was in demand
as it appeared several years before other similar infrastructures such as GEM
and Jitter (released by the makers of Max/MSP in October 2002). Earlier
software such as Image/ine developed in 1997 at STEIM was drawing in a similar
direction, but the fact that NATO.0+55+3d was operating inside the Max/MSP
framework, using its "visual programming" protocol, provided at the same time
greater ease of use and more flexibility, allowing the user to create his own
applications and tools. It gained popularity among video artists and
performers, who were using it for a large variety of purposes, prominently for
live performance and interactive installation."

"The last version of NATO.0+55+3d modular was released in November 2000, while
additional NATO objects were developed until June 2001."

I say it was notorious, due to the "art persona" who developed it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_(author)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova_\(author\))

"Netochka Nezvanova is the pseudonym used by the author(s) of nato.0+55+3d, a
real-time, modular, video and multi-media processing environment. Alternate
aliases include "=cw4t7abs", "punktprotokol", "0f0003", "maschinenkunst"
(preferably spelled "m2zk!n3nkunzt"), "integer", and "antiorp". The name
itself is adopted from the main character of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's first novel
Netochka Nezvanova (1849) and translates as "nameless nobody."

Salon wrote an interesting article about her and her antics (including her
lawsuit against Cycling '74, developer of Max): "The most feared woman on the
Internet: Netochka Nezvanova is a software programmer, radical artist and
online troublemaker. But is she for real?"

[https://www.salon.com/2002/03/01/netochka/](https://www.salon.com/2002/03/01/netochka/)

"NN's reputation is based on mouth 2 mouth adverti.cement. When something is
very well konstruckted and designed with a degree of integrity it stands on
its own ... All the cool girls wear NN."

"As a community destroyer, she's fantastic," says Bernstein, the Brooklyn
artist. "She's perhaps one of the Internet's first professional demolition
experts. She's a real talent."

"The legend is entirely negative, in a sense. But it turns out that people are
really attracted to that," says David Zicarelli, the founder of Cycling '74, a
small software company in San Francisco,

"Her contribution as a Net artist is in some ways more culturally significant
than her work as a programmer," says Beatrice Beaubien.

NN's response to that article:

[http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-
bold-020...](http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-
bold-0203/msg00078.html)

    
    
        10.  When thrown off a mailing list, 
    
         I have not been thrown off a mailing list.
         I have been illegally transformed into a yellow flower.
    
         A young girl one day found me, and with half closed eyes whispered:
    
         Perfection,
         Today you've peered in my direction.

~~~
mattkevan
I understood very little of that, but if someone named Case or Casey was
tasked to discover NN’s true identity by a shadowy billionaire or rogue AI I
wouldn’t be surprised if it was the plot summary from an upcoming William
Gibson novel.

With in-depth descriptions of Japanese reproductions of American workwear.

------
rch
LZX Industries is making some nice video synth modules for eurorack:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKWq8sLfRFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKWq8sLfRFc)

[https://youtu.be/MwrwJXuWI20?t=1m6s](https://youtu.be/MwrwJXuWI20?t=1m6s)

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extralego
It’s great to see Big Pauper mentioned toward the end. I visited his workshop
about 4 years ago in Portland and purchased a modded device from him. It’s a
wonderful piece. It’s nothing like a real video synth, of course, but I have
used it for numerous performances. I use it in a light footed manner. It’s too
easy to use these modded things without care to achieve sloppy results but Big
Pauper aims to isolate the effects in a useful way.

------
jarmitage
Browser-based live coding environment inspired by analog video synths:
[https://github.com/ojack/hydra](https://github.com/ojack/hydra)

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romwell
I fell like Winamp AVS and other visualization plug-ins deserve a mention here
as well.

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DonHopkins
I've always had a love and fascination for the distortion effects of old video
camera tubes, as well as video feedback, and also how the tubes themselves
look: like George Jetson's apartment building.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_camera_tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_camera_tube)

"Image Orthicon Camera Tubes":
[http://www.r-type.org/articles/art-141.htm](http://www.r-type.org/articles/art-141.htm)

"The 5655 three inch Image Orthicon television pick-up tube is an example of
top quality television camera electronics from the late 1940s. These tubes
were found in professional studio cameras in the 1950s and they replaced the
Iconoscope tube cameras.":
[http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaj0100.htm](http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaj0100.htm)

They have a beautiful "blooming" effect when you overdrive them:

"Target overdrive visual effects from Concord NEI-17 vidicon camera: This some
cool target overdrive effects made from my late 60s Concord NEI-17 B&W vidicon
tube TV camera. I had the camera pointed to some items in the kitchen and to
my computer and I adjust the external target control knob on the back of my
camera up and down to which when the target level is adjusted high you get a
bloom/glow effect and when adjusted to extreme excess the picture is
solarized, very neat simple way to make instant cool effects! :D":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRQmAHpTnEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRQmAHpTnEQ)

I wonder if anyone has written a shader that is a physical simulation of a
vidicon tube, that can reproduce these effects. Here's an article by somebody
who set out to mimic the effect, but I don't think he did a full physical
simulation, he just tried to approxomate the effect:

[http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=35148](http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=35148)

Here's the resulting video he made:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq7y4gsW3Yc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq7y4gsW3Yc)

The Donnie and Marie show's Disco Finale has some awesome vidicon tube
blooming effects with all the disco balls and sequins under spotlights:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-99Ux4_vnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-99Ux4_vnU)

Portishead's "All Mine" video shows a somewhat subtler and beautiful vidicon
tube effect, along with some simple video feedback:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsPTbRGu9Yk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsPTbRGu9Yk)

The chaos researcher James Crutchfield did his PhD thesis at Santa Cruz about
the space time dynamics video feedback, using an analog video processing
computer. His video explains the theory and mathematics behind effective video
feedback, which inspires me:

Space-Time Dynamics in Video Feedback. Citation: J. P. Crutchfield, "Space-
Time Dynamics in Video Feedback". Physica 10D (1984) 229-245.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Kn3djJMCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Kn3djJMCE)

Here's a paper he wrote that describes the effects in that video:

[http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/papers/Crutchfield.PhysicaD1984....](http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/papers/Crutchfield.PhysicaD1984.pdf)

"Space-Time Dynamics in Video Feedback. James P. Crutchfield. Center for
Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Los Alamos, New Mexico
87545, USA."

"Video feedback provides a readily available experimental system to study
complex spatial and temporal dynamics. This article outlines the use and
modeling of video feedback systems. It includes a discussion of video physics
and proposes two models for video feedback dynamics based on a discrete-time
iterated functional equation and on a reaction-diffusion partial differential
equation. Color photographs illustrate results from actual video experiments.
Digital computer simulations of the models reproduce the basic spatio-temporal
dynamics found in the experiments."

Some interesting excerpts:

"In the beginning, I argued that a video feedback system is a space-time
simulator. But a simulator of what exactly? This section attempts to answer
this question as concretely as possible at this time. A very useful tool in
this is the mathematical theory of dynamical systems. It provides a consistent
language for describing complex temporal behavior. Video feedback dynamics,
though, is interesting not only for the time-dependent behavior but also for
its complex spatial patterns. In the following section I will come back to the
question of whether current dynamical systems theory is adequate for the rich
spatio-temporal behavior found in video feedback. This section introduces the
qualitative language of dynamical systems [5], and then develops a set of
discrete-time models for video feedback based on the physics of video systems.
At the section's end I propose a continuum model akin to the reaction-
diffusion equations used to model chemical dynamics and biological
morphogenesis."

He also talks about "dislocations", which is similar to the effect of the
error diffusion dithering that I love:

"A good example of quasi-attractors is the class of images displaying
dislocations. This terminology is borrowed from fluid dynamics, where
dislocations refer to the broken structure of convective rolls in an otherwise
simple array. Dislocations are regions of broken symmetry where the flow field
has a singularity. The formation of this singularity typically requires a
small, but significant, energy expenditure*. In video feedback, dislocations
appear as inter-digitated light and dark stripes. The overall pattern can be
composed of regular parallel arrays of alternating light and dark stripes with
no dislocations, and convoluted, maze-like regions where stripes break up into
shorter segments with many dislocations. The boundaries between segment ends
form the dislocations. They can move regularly or wander erratically.
Dislocations form in pairs when a stripe breaks in two. They also annihilate
by coalescing two stripes. Dislocations make for very complex, detailed
patterns whose temporal evolution is difficult to describe in terms of
dynamical systems because of their irregular creation and annihilation.
Nonetheless, when perturbed very similar images reappear. A quasi-attractor
would be associated with global features, such as the relative areas of
regular stripe arrays and dislocation regions, the time-averaged number of
dislocations, or the pattern's gross symmetry."

