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Rutt-Etra Restoration in NYC

by vade

VJ-U has posted a wonderful livecast on Operator 11 featuring the restoration of 3 Rutt-Etra raster analog video synthesizers. I was fortunate enough to be invited to check the machines out in person and have some time to try and help out. Mathew Schlanger and Benton C Bainbridge help explain the history and unique capability of the Rutt-Etra. Certainly worth a watch for those interested in the art form and unique hardware.

For those unaware of what a Rutt-Etra is, be sure and check out Audio Visualizers page on the subject. There is a lot of history with these machines, and they are still quite competent tools with a very unique look and feel.

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  • http://www.cutcaster.blogspot.com john

    great video and thanks for sharing. would have loved to have seen the machine and process as well in person.

  • http://www.synthetik.com john dalton

    Thanks for posting this! It inspired me to write a Rutt-Etra simulator this weekend which is getting added as a new MSG Processor in MSG Evolver and Studio Artist. Feel free to post more information on classic analog video effects that would be fun to digitally simulate. There are probably a lot of interesting processing ideas that have been explored in analog video synthesizer history that may have been forgotten.

  • http://abstrakt.vade.info/ vade

    Im glad it was inspirational. Id love to see some examples of your digital Rutt Etra. I've been meaning to work on a better version of my Jitter based Rutt Etra effect.

    Let me know how yours turns out :)

    As for previous Analog effects, thats a good question. Some research might be in order.

  • http://www.synthetik.com john dalton

    Since you asked, here's 2 simple examples from playing around this weekend with my Rutt Etra simulator.

    http://studioartist.ning.com/photo/photo/show?id=…

    http://studioartist.ning.com/video/video/show?id=…

  • http://www.synthetik.com john dalton

    You definitely got me going on a Rutt Etra simulation groove. i wrote another MSG simulator this morning that takes some of the Rutt Etra ideas and reworks them as an black and white engraving style effect.

    http://studioartist.ning.com/photo/photo/show?id=…

  • http://abstrakt.vade.info/ vade

    Oh, that last one is particularly nice. Very very cool. Are you doing that on the CPU or on the GPU? I attempted a shader pipeline with a GLSL fragment program, but ran into some issues with high displacement amounts and discontinuity.

    Anyway, really cool, and im glad the Rutt Etras inspire others :)

  • http://www.synthetik.com john dalton

    It's done using code that runs on the cpu. thanks.

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