A bank of faders, a touchpad, and then … it just does anything you want. Even today, the idea of a fully-integrated visual instrument is a pretty profound concept. Ableton’s creators thought about the design of the Synclavier digital synth (the rival of the CVI’s music sibling, the CMI) when designing their software. At least a couple of you have some strong ideas about the future of "visual instruments" and live visualism in general. Certainly, I’ll be thinking about the CVI as I look at the setup of my live visual rig. The effects themselves on the CVI don’t all date well, especially after the CVI itself popularized their use (and overuse) in the 80s. But the elegance of the design as interface can still inspire.

Co-creator Peter Vogel has kept satisfying our appetite for gems from his VHS library. Thanks, Peter, for saving these from permanent deterioration. Top: watch a BBC host get a kick out of turning herself into a video star. Bottom: the original demo video, which gives a good overview of the effects capabilities. (Especially interesting, as students and artists learn to recreate some of the same effects from scratch in tools like Max/MSP/Jitter and Processing.) Tomorrow’s world, indeed.

This brief video, uploaded to YouTube by Fairlight co-founder and designer Peter Vogel himself, gives a brief history of the development of Fairlight’s legendary video hardware, the CVI. The CVI was a theoretical (in name, at least) visual counterpart to the ground-breaking CMI digital sampler instrument. And, like the CMI, the CVI had a major impact on artists and produced some of the best digital creation of the 80s — and some of its most-repeated cliches.

Vintage Fairlight Computer Music Instrument Videos [Retro Thing; see also Create Digital Music]

But here’s an important difference: has the evolution of visual hardware and software really equaled what’s happened since the CMI on the sound side? Music hardware and software has evolved and exploded since the CMI. The only real visual hardware today available to consumers that’s not a mixer is Roland’s CG-8, and it’s arguably narrower in scope than the CVI, despite being two decades newer. Even in software, the idea of a visual instrument you can play is still evolving. Now, I suppose you could argue visualists have more to play with — powerful 3D capabilities, for one — but perhaps that’s why visual gear has been slow to catch up.

What do you think? Is there a visual - musical cap in digital tech? Or am I trying to compare two things that really can’t be compared, whether Australian designers gave them parallel acronyms or not?

How do you make a computer-animated sequence of 3D wireframe visuals of fancy, Empire-built battle stations — in 1977? Very, very slowly. Our friend James at Retro Thing, aside from being a electronic-sonic inventor, is a fan of vintage visuals and was already teaching the history of computer animation in the mid 80s. (Hint: prepping that class didn’t take quite as long then as it would now.)

James explains the origins of the famous Death Star briefing room sequence:

The wizard behind the early Star Wars CG was Larry Cuba, who worked out of the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at the University of Illinois. Legend has it that he was pushing the hardware so hard to create the simple wireframe images that he constantly had to adjust the air conditioning in the computer room to avoid system crashes. Cuba used a vector graphics scripting language called GRASS (GRAphics Symbiosis System), written by Tom DeFanti at Ohio State in 1974. The system he used incorporated a Vector General CRT, DEC PDP-11 minicomputer, along with various cameras and recorders.

Star Wars: Prehistoric Computer Graphics [Retro Thing, via Boing Boing Gadgets]

I have a special place in my heart for the original film Star Wars because — James will appreciate this — I initially experienced it as a kid only on sound Super 8 film, cut down to a svelte 17 minutes. (My understanding of narrative was never quite the same.)

But to me, these graphics don’t look primitive; they look elemental, much in the same way that you don’t get tired of ancient Egyptian art. (And in the timeline of computer graphics, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine thousands of years of art history happening in a few decades.)

The real star, though, is the film Cuba used to pitch computer graphics to George Lucas, Arabesque, made with John Whitney. If this 1975 film doesn’t inspire you as a visualist, nothing will. Correction: Evidently it wasn’t Arabesque, but the movie First Fig. Larry Cuba himself writes in comments:

Thank you for the appreciation of “Arabesque.” The film I screened for Lucas was actually my first CG film, “First Fig.”

(And you can connect the historical dots here, too: without Arabesque First Fig, no CG in Star Wars, no ILM CG, no Pixar.)

Well, George Lucas may or may not have seen Arabesque, but you can, below, and it’s still inspiring:

And for another Larry Cuba film, here’s the 1985 Calculated Movements:

For Whitney’s 1960s work, see previously:

Videos from the Dawn of Video: Mechanical Effects and Oscilloscope Games

And for more on Larry Cuba, see:

Larry’s personal site

Larry Cuba on the Star Wars “Wookipedia”

Maybe it’s time to re-write that history of computer animation.

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.

Want to learn how to pull off graphics? Make it work with optical and real for real first. Tron may have been a pioneering moment in computer graphics, but a lot of its unique look came from unique optical effects on a scale not seen before or after. The glowing screen was an actual lighting effect, which is why CG artists have taken such a liking to the film’s aesthetic, even if it was ultimately too labor-intensive to apply to the whole movie. There’s even an analog in the music: Wendy Carlos’ adept blend of big orchestral, choral, and organ textures with synths.

Of course, the makers of Tron didn’t leave out computer graphics entirely. And that makes this fan remake — no CG, and no optical effects trickery, either — adorable and inspiring.

Via Kotaku.

You’re also aware of just how much of this sequence is sound and editing. Erm, not that motion isn’t important — if I were to say that, I should say it on, you know, the other blog. Think synthesis of the two.

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.

I miss ANSI art. In the character-only days of the online world (pre-Web), these text-based graphics had a strangely pop-art quality, with hard edges, digital textures, and bold colors. This is not to be confused with ASCII art, mind you — ANSI art had lots of extra graphical features. Even by the early 1990s, landing on a modem-based BBS with ANSI art felt like leaving the grungy dullness of the country for the Los Vegas strip.

Which brings us to the relevance to this site. I’ve seen lots of cheesy ASCII art filters for video, implemented in environments like Processing, for one. But how about motion graphics with ANSI? Now that’s an interesting challenge. Or, for that matter, given infinite choices, how can you make your own creative constraints to do something essential and artistic? ANSI’s appeal might be purely nostalgic, but it suggests that more power over pixels has sometimes given us less freedom, not more. Something to ponder while you’re coding / editing / visualizing — there’s a chance to make up your own restrictions.

20 goto 10 in San Francisco will feature “ANSI”, curated by Acid Jazz from artists Somms & Lord Jazz.

20 goto 10 gallery page

Rhizome News: Escape Code to the Past

The great Rutt/Etra synthesizer repair party is almost over (hear all about it in a past episode of VJ-U). Daniel Summer threw the party, Matthew Schlanger hosted it, Messrs. Steve Rutt and Bill Etra came to repair and perform with the machines, respectively, many others, including Benton-C and Kyle Lapidus, came to help repair them (you know who you are), and David Last and I stopped by to play with them yesterday. David shot some great pictures (see slideshow below or on Flickr) of the machines and a new composition by Bill. Note: the screenshots were photographed off of a monitor while Benton was capturing the HD footage of Bill’s work, and David played with the hue of the images in Photoshop to give them a little variety. I will upload some HD footage of my own play on the Rutt/Etra sometime soon. If you’re in New York City, you can see some of it when I play my set with DJ Olive at {R}ake next Wednesday the 30th.

Slideshow created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Ever miss 1995? In 1995, this passed for online entertainment: static web pages, some 20-somethings hanging out in casual- and swim-wear, and the ability to talk back to the “cast.”

Welcome to the Spot. We’re a bunch of friends sharing a beach house in Santa Monica, California.

Everyday we put up this website and tell the world about our lives through our daily journals.

We can also interact with you - but only if you come in!

The Spot, at the Internet Archive

Well, okay, actually, it didn’t really pass; I remember checking out its launch that year as a novelty but think few people really stuck with it. It returned, undead, in 2004. No one cared (wisely). Well, now The Spot is back again. Except it’s on the Rupert Murdoch-owner MySpace, has video, and has actually widened, not narrowed, the gap with trashy reality TV shows like Laguna Beach. (Ha! See, manufacturing Cheez Whiz isn’t as easy as you thought, is it?)

Roommates (Don’t click that. Really. I could believe Roommates could cause gastrointestinal distress even for a die-hard trash TV fan — maybe especially for them.)

But, somewhere out of this hideousness, is there a lesson for how we think about “new media” (as we called it in 1995)?