As visualists we tend to spend most of our time working with digital processes. So it’s good to step back occasionally and remember that computers don’t need to do all of the work:

1154 stills taken over 2-3 weeks. The lighting and setting is kept remarkably consistent, although I’m guessing someone with a little more production knowledge (or spare time) would have removed the tripod-bump in post.

While we’re looking at things Nodal: The Sandin Analogue Image Processor (or IP) is an impressive looking device, and is demonstrated by a man in an impressive looking hat.

(If you’re impatient, skip towards the end for some analogue video trippy colour coolness)

There is so much beauty in this video: The hat. Analogue versions of effects we’re still using today. Calling a tech demo “a romp”. The Hat. The digital computers “kind of thing which does your bills and payroll” quip (inspiration for Apple perhaps?). Physical patching of video modules. THE HAT! WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

Ok, perhaps the hat is part of Dan Sandin’s “copy it right distribution religion”. Definitely a forward thinker, that man.

Via VideoThing

Previously: Free Vintage Fairlight VJ Clips.

The Digital Worlds blog, an Open University blog, has an excellent look back at the artistry of early video tubes entitled “Oscilloscopy.”

There’s John Whitney’s “showreel” from 1961, which shows off the ground-breaking (1961, folks!) possibilities of his “mechanical analog computer,” as appropriated from an antiaircraft gun director. Wait … say that again? Yep, Whitney actually used a mechanical contrivance to rotate layers of graphics. When that technique met up with the power of  It’s an idea that’s just waiting for today’s DIYers to tackle, perhaps mixing modern digital techniques with mechanical ones.

Next, also from the above blog post, witness the gorgeous oscilloscope graphics and mechanical control pads of Tennis for Two, an early (thought to be the second-ever, though you never know with these things) video game made by William Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Again, DIY project? Mechanical controllers, but this time coupled with 3D graphics? It is the 50th anniversary year of the title. (People under 35, remember that the next time your parents start talking about “back in their day” before video games. Tell them it’s not your fault they never dropped by the Brookhaven National Laboratory.)

Heck, I wish even oscilloscopes looked that pretty now.

There’s something really inspiring and elemental about these works — amplified by mechanical elements used in their creation and control. It’s something I think is possible in code; maybe it’s just challenging in a different way. (And maybe when you have that feeling of magic, you know you’re in the right place.)

This certainly gives me a different source of inspiration as I work with generative techniques in Java/Processing and the like. If this inspires any of your work, send us photos / video links — we’d love to see it! And motion graphics history buffs, happy to know more about these — and other — pioneers.

Sure, the name of the site may be Create Digital Motion, but don’t get me wrong — we know digital is evil. Or, specifically, digital gets real evil at certain times. There are the latency-inducing, problem-causing HDMI cables when VGA or S-Video or Composite would do the job, the “look at our brand, new storage format” trend that turns out to be “look at the hideously onerous, new copy protection method we’ve just invented.”

We know a little bit of our soul died when we brought in all this digital tech to our work. (Happy side note, though: my eyes now glow red. It’s totally awesome at parties.) So, we now proudly present The Battle for Analog, a completely nonsensical look at the analog world we might leave behind. (Well, unless you carry some mobile VHS decks to a gig, which could be a great idea … a little magnetic distortion live, anyone?)

And to kick things off, we’ve got a look back at VHS’ stand against the puppy-killing DVD, via our friends at the All Retro, All The Time, Retro Thing. So, at the risk of “boneheaded nostalgia” as someone described this in comments on RT, I present this mock VHS PSA from musclebeaver, with music from the Transformers music proudly playing in the background:

And, uh, yeah, it does appear to have been crafted in After Effects. Where is that Export to VHS option in CS3, anyway?

PS - I think Blu-Ray winning out over HD-DVD is finally Sony’s revenge for losing on superior Betamax.

Pinnacle’s new Video Transfer box is a portable analog video (S-video/Y-c and composite) and stereo audio (RCA) h.264 encoder. The Video Transfer box has no built in storage - you supply it. Touting iPod video compatibility and USB Mass storage support, you can in theory hook up any USB 2.0 device to record video to.

With selectable quality (Good, Better, Best - sound familiar?), the Video Transfer supports iPod Video, Nano (third gen) and iPod Classic, as well as the PSP and PSP Slim, USB 2.0 flash drives and USB 2.0 hard drives. I’m guessing no Touch/iPhone support due to the lack of USB Disk Mode. ‘Tis a shame. Ed.: That likely knocks out Zune and a few other devices, as well — if you’re listening, oh device manufacturers, we really, really, really prefer to buy devices with this feature!

Grab a nice big, cheap, old USB 2.0 and route S-Video off of the back of your Edirol V4 mixer and have instant hour-long, high-quality web and PMP ready gig recordings. Sounds perfect.

The best news? It’s coming January 15th for only US$129.99. Awesome.

Via Engadget, and Macworld.com.

Now, what to do about the other end? How about a 500GB - 1TB LaCie external hard drive with composite / S-Video / component video output? You’ll never need a DVD player hooked up to your mixer again.

LaCie’s LaCinema Premier external HDD surfaces [Engadget]

This week on VJ-U, Benton-C Bainbridge interviewed Ray Sweeten, an audio and visual artist who pushes the creative limits of the oscilloscope, creating gorgeous, abstract forms with intense waves of sound.

Watch VJ-U episode dvadeset i dva: Applications in cross-modal media

Click To Play

Bill Etra, the analog video processing pioneer, has been posting some of his original works from the late 1960s through 2005 on video sharing site Blip.tv. It’s a sort of ongoing retrospective of his work. His techniques are varied, including Rutt-Etra processing (using the hardware he co-designed), hand-controlled oscillator-to-RGB inputs, and laptop-based software rigs.

While not a complete archive, it’s an interesting look back at important works and techniques. I’m glad this is online; it’s hard to find useful archives of older analog pieces simply because most techniques involved were incredibly hard to capture to tape. Usually only re-scanning would work (re-scanning is a fancy term for pointing a camera at a CRT). More work will be added, so check back occasionally. I think archives like this are invaluable for inspiration.

Bill Etra’s blip.tv Page

Ed.: We’ll definitely be watching for updates, and hopefully cdmotion can help encourage more documentation of this stuff online. -PK

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.

Data Is Nature brings to our attention the Valsuka Archive, an incredible trove of early video art history, exhibitions, work, designs and circuit diagrams. Paul describes it better than I:

The Vasulka Archive is massive repository of documents from the pioneering days of electronic, computer and video art. Containing a staggering 27000 pages of scanned documents, replete with hand typed texts, circuit diagrams and skuzzy ink marks, I could spend the rest of the week perusing this stuff, believe me. The big names are here, Crutchfield, Conrad, Paik, Van der Beek, Youngblood etc - hand written correspondences to the Vasulka’s as well as reviews and even obituaries of each artist/scientist - but history is selective and remembers according to its own algorithm. Encouragingly, not only do we find artifacts from the so called key movers of the time but also an exhaustive list of lesser, and relatively unknown practitioners waiting to be (re)discovered.

Check out the The Vasulka Archive and see what has inspired every generation of video artist. From TV to film to Music Video and club style VJing, it all started with these pioneers.

Via Data is Nature.