An Overview of Video Glitch / Synth Gear Makers in 2021

yo it's michael aka yovizal and this is a video i've been wanting to make for quite a while now it's about analog video gear specifically gear for video art made in the present day this is a rabbit hole that's surprisingly not well documented at all especially when you compare this to the audio world where there's countless videos and countless documentation about guitar pedals and synthesizers but it's dang near impossible to find anything about video hardware i want this video to be an introduction or an eye opener to the current state of video hardware specifically focusing on those who are making with the intent to sell hardware that has inputs that are composite rca or s video this is probably not going to be an exhaustive list and i recognize that there will be new stuff out by the time you're watching this video but i've tried to cover as much as i can and in the description you will find links to all the social medias and websites of the people i will talk about in this video by now in the 2020s big brand manufacturers have altogether stopped manufacturing gear for analog video and pretty much anything in the format is discontinued and getting more and more rare especially as things break demand goes up and more people become interested in this format which we once took for granted the good news is that some of what i'm going to cover is actually digital hardware that's emulating or at least compatible with analog video but most of what i'm talking about is handmade or at least independently designed and based off of the now discontinued devices from back in the day so yes analog video art is not very institutionalized and it's definitely in the diy realm of art firstly analog video glitch art in general is not a new phenomenon there are plenty of good examples of artists from the institutionalized art world of the past who've used glitches to express or state something these people could be considered early pioneers in this regard because they saw video glitches as not just technical errors but an actual medium likewise video synthesizers have been around sort of but they more or less were kind of confined to universities and installations with big budgets for as long as analog video itself has been around there's never really been any glitch or video synthesizer hardware that was accessible to the public until the late 2000s when a few people really sat down and took a look at the common video circuits around at the time stuff like your old church video mixers or the stuff that was just sitting in tv stations that suddenly became obsolete as everything went digital these people saw value in these devices that were just gathering dust or sitting in goodwill or even worst of all being thrown away and they started building visual instruments that anybody who had basic knowledge of how video works could pick up and make art with these people may not have been the first to do this but today they are some of the most well known they are lzx industries tachyons plus and big popper modified circuitry i'm gonna start with tachyons plus and bpmc because they are pros at what you could call circuit bending hardware you might have heard of people buying old kids toys or keyboards from goodwill just to play with the circuits to make them make strange weird sounds but these people took existing mixers and enhancers from manufacturers like panasonic roland sema video onyx and after what were probably years of studying these devices schematics and experimenting and no doubt breaking things they found points in these circuits that allowed them to solder together advanced modifications that exploited the video circuit's existing components to do these crazy wild glitchy distorted analog video effects that the manufacturers obviously never foresaw anybody trying to do all the while not actually breaking the device itself meaning you could use these devices as the manufacturers intended like they were never hijacked now before i go further i just want to make a distinction between two different kinds of hardware i'm talking about in this video there's gear that's intended to glitch existing video signals for an aesthetic effect which tends to be circuit bent gear and then there's gear which is more generative meaning it's more like a literal video synthesizer making signals from scratch think of the difference between an effects pedal and a synthesizer now there's some overlap but i'm just making this rough distinction so we can better understand what it is i'm talking about as we move forward this is tachyons plus website his name is logan he's currently based in florida and he's told me that he started seriously modifying and selling gear under the name in 2012 right now he's slammed with orders for his popular devices like the vortex decoder cyconizer dream weapon all of which are based on discontinued video enhancers these are made to order and have custom paint jobs applied because you know he takes a lot of care with his builds and puts a lot of emphasis in the detail and look of them so naturally the price is well into the hundreds but that's fair especially for the mileage you'll get out of one of these things and the increasing rarity of the base gear but you would be buying this for the iconic analog glitch effects that you get straight away this is not to say that it's only his gear that can produce these kinds of looks but at the very least tachyons plus gear is a notable force behind the dreamy cyberpunk analog glitch aesthetic that's become more popular recently he's probably one of the more high profile analog glitch artists he's even done visuals for tame impala with his gear and because of that he tends to be one of the first places people look at when they're thinking about buying video hardware but hear me out there's a lot more to uncover than just him or this next artist big popper modified circuitry also known as drew based in portland oregon and drew deserves the same if not more attention for his work because he's been doing this officially since 2009 and he makes some of the most uniquely looking and functioning devices i've ever seen on this planet he's the only person i can think of who's modified all of the common consumer video mixers and turn them into glitch art generating machines and not only is he good at hijacking pretty much any video circuit uh he has a lot of demos to show for drew also owns the domain glitchart.com which i remember spending lots of time looking at over the years in addition to modified mixers he's got modified circuits from enhancers that he's isolated into enclosures and put big knobs on them making them really easy to use versatile exploratory glitch art tools i know first hand because i actually soldered together one of his diy kits which is called the fluxus it's since been replaced by the fluxus duo but you can tell he's put a lot of thought and effort in making this a clean design and something that's easy to use in generating glitch art one of my favorite yet lesser known circuit bending artists is coolpix.biz which is actually an art collective founded in 2012 in massachusetts and i also happen to have one of their devices this is the line eraser it's based off this vidicraft proc amp which is basically just a video circuit that boosts it and enhances the video signal i've had this for over a year now and i use it in pretty much every one of my video projects and music videos just because it has some certain effects that i really like that i can't achieve with anything else unfortunately as of writing it's out of stock that's just because the base units who knows if they're gonna appear on ebay again same thing unfortunately with their first uh device called the chromatic interplexer but they do have plenty of other builds available like the lumasoner rhetorizer and umber phaser sam the person who makes these builds has been doing this since 2015 and he tells me his bends are a little less complicated than tachyons plus or bpmcs are but honestly i am not at all bored by what this uh can do and i'm still exploring uh the possibilities uh available in this device next is a very underrated artist from germany called mescaline light shows this person makes stunningly crafted circuit bent devices but the catch is that they're based off of german units which obviously are pal which if you don't know is the common video standard used in europe meaning it's not compatible with nstc devices that you'll find in north america james the person behind masculine has been doing liquid light shows since 2006 but over time got interested in modifying analog video gear and since 2018 has been seriously putting out some devices right now there's the gravity and mandalorian which are in stock plus many more coming and these are just some sample images of what can be done with those uh not even mentioning how beautiful the craftsmanship is on these i think this artist is really cool because if i were to guess their base units are a little more common over there than what our units are in the states so this artist will be making some cool looking gear well into the future speaking of future there's lo-fi future from the uk who's been a thing since 2011 but has been making gear since 2014 he's recently put up an offer to modify any panasonic wj ave fives uh so long as you pay a price and ship it over and then he'll ship it back with modifications he also has a guide on how to modify yourself the famous adderall v4 but that's definitely not for beginners because soldering on what is basically a digital computer is a very hard and dangerous thing to do he's also got a few glitch processors which are actually original circuits he built from scratch these are the t420 and audiovis so those are definitely worth checking out there syntony aka bastian from france is known for having created the avi mod which is a diy kit that allows you to build the same circuit that exists in this archer super video processor but you don't need one of those to to make this glitch processor because synteny has provided pre-assembled or kits in the online store there's also the trq and ffg which if you look at uh can also be assembled as kits so those are worth checking out melted electronics aka martino from italy has multiple diy kits you can build from his etsy shop most notably the mutant enhancer which is like the avi mod but this kit makes it very easy to add your own modifications to that circuit just by marking certain bend points i recommend this because especially with newer artists the impulse tends to be to buy something from tachyons plus or big popper immediately which is great and all but sometimes that's for a lack of a better word overkill i really encourage you to buy a diy kit to get your hands dirty and still accomplish some awesome looking effects for much cheaper much faster and maybe you'll even feel some inspiration to create some of your own video effects in one of my previous videos i showed the world's most basic video glitch circuit which is so amazingly simple it's called dirty video mixing which was coined by carl klomp one of the og video benders and it's literally just taking a single potentiometer usually like 1k ohms and turning it back and forth in between two video signals you might find on etsy or even ebay single knob dirty mixers inside enclosures sometimes going for as much as 70 or even a hundred dollars and uh let me just say uh you're welcome to buy one of them and support the artist but just know if it's got a single knob on it like that and switches which are merely just passively letting the signal through or not uh you're probably paying all that money for something that in reality you could build yourself with just alligator clips i'm just saying melted electronics also has on his etsy shop pcb boards and kits for dirty video mixers that have even more inputs and features than the others you might see going for about the same price or less and so does freedom enterprise from portugal although those are active meaning they're powered so you can do even more cool effects and you even have a patch cable interface and on the topic of diy video gear you might have come across the chavi ch cha you might have come across the ch a slash v the three trins rgb plus 1c and ec500 which are all related because these are diy video synthesizers there's links to that in the description and now i can finally talk about lzx industries lzx is fundamentally different from what i've talked about in this video so far okay maybe not fundamentally because the end result is video art but they're different in that their gear is original instead of circuit bent and modular meaning that you can patch stuff together to modulate anything in the circuit like you can with the rackmount audio synthesizer lcx was founded by lars larson and ed leckie in 2008 they're based in portland and they have since become the video modular synthesizer makers i remember first being introduced to lzx with look mom no computers video on the lzx videot i remember my jaw dropped because i was like this is crazy though the video is a standalone unit lzx's other gear is mostly eurorack modules which need to be used in combination with other modules the kind of situation where you spend 200 on one thing and 200 on another so you can combine it with something that cost 400 so yeah it adds up but it's still a cool thing if that's your thing because you're generating video signals from scratch lzx has already gotten a lot of coverage from people they've got an active forum community youtube channel many guides so i don't feel too qualified to talk about them myself because i don't own any lzx gear or modular gear for that matter lzx fulfills the modular video synthesis niche very well and they've no doubt helped inspire other eurorack module creators a big third-party video module is the structure by erogenous tones which technically is a standalone video synth but i almost always see it be used with other lzx gear other notable eurorack module builders are brown shoes only visible signals reverse landfill and afterlife laboratories and many more by the way if video synthesis sounds like your thing but you're not prepared to spend hundreds of dollars there are a few software video synthesizers you can run on your pc one of them being lumen by paracosm which costs a little over a hundred and the other being cathodimer which is just twenty dollars on steam i've used both software in combination with my analog gear using downscalers but for those of you that want a video synth that feels a little more standalone there is hypno by sleepy circuits which is a raspberry pi based video synth that runs on code but still has an analog video out as well as hdmi it aims to be plug and play meaning there's not much you have to do other than turn it on and plug it in though you can have inputs going into it and it still acts like an lzx style video synthesizer with two oscillators having shape frequency rotation polarization controls as well as modular synth style patching points feedback controls midi controller compatibility and a lot more features that are most definitely covered in their in-depth manual dedicated forum or youtube videos this is sleepy circuit's main project currently which has been in the works since the summer of 2017. the company itself debuted with the product in early 2019 making this a relatively new device in the scene with hypno success it's no surprise that other raspberry pi based devices would come into existence which if you don't know raspberry pi's are small tiny computers that you can program to do almost anything and attach any component to and in the past couple of years a person named andre j has been designing several exciting pieces of analog video compatible gear all of which are standalone and share the same compatibility features that the hypno or any other raspberry pi based device has the benefit of processing and generating video through andre's code based devices rather than actual circuitry is that you can do a lot of interesting things that you can't do in analog like slit scanning or mesh effects and time interpolation plus you get regular updates from andre who's always working on his code and getting feedback from users and you have the option of building these devices yourself just by ordering one of andre's kits or the individual components i talked with andre over zoom and i get the impression that the future of analog video gear rests in his open source devices he's a real life genius that could alleviate potentially the issues we're facing with the shortage of gear just by sidestepping those and achieving some of the same effects in computer-based devices that anybody can build another open source raspberry pi based device is the strange loop by melted electronics who i mentioned before this is a video feedback emulator similar to andre j's wave pool and this gives you a ton of controls and modes to play with and some of what i've seen from it looks like camera feedback except for this you don't need a camera pointed at a monitor you just need this box remember lo-fi future who i mentioned earlier well one of his biggest contributions to the diy video art scene is his guide on the vga converter no input feedback loop generator that's a mouthful but the concept is not super complicated feedback loops where you take the output of one video source and put it into the input of that same video source which is like pointing a mic at a speaker produces effects that are not painful but trippy and this is the basis for a lot of video art out there this diy circuit you can build for like 10 bucks and it's literally what drives lo-fi futures two video synthesizers the fb01 and fb100 which are beautifully crafted and allow you to have even greater control over the feedback loop and to clarify i call these video synthesizers but they're not synthesizers in the same way that lzx modules are or andre j's or anyone else i've mentioned before because lo-fi futures approach is to use feedback loops from two vga converters plugged into each other george gleichner from brooklyn has also taken this feedback generating concept and run wild with it with his very attractive semi-modular custom feedback synthesizer builds which are on his website and like lo-fi future you can contact them about making a custom one for you finally lastly i have a few honorable mentions this is the critter and guitare website and i remember one of my friends having their etsy video synthesizer which has audio and midi inputs but the thing about the etsy is that it's definitely a visual tool it's programmable with your own modes and patches in the python programming language the thing about this one in particular though is that it outputs 720p through hdmi only so to use it with anything analog you will need an hdmi to rca converter which are easily found on amazon recently critter and guitari announced a second video synthesizer called the iz and this one has an additional analog video output removing the need for a downscaler but this one seems to have a focus on audio visualization which again you can customize using code another honorable mention that doesn't fit really in any of the previous categories but is still at least for me almost essential when doing video art live on the spot is resolume avenue 7 which in the past has been used more for vjs that are mixing or clip launching different videos but it's for this reason alone that it it's very powerful and it has a great library of stock effects that are super potent i would consider anybody that is seriously wanting to vj or make visuals for audio to look into it and it doesn't require any rendering just requires a good computer and they have a demo you can try out but it has a watermark on it and speaking of vjs there's synesthesia a software that is even more geared towards vjs and clip mixers with lots of trippy effects and scenes that you can modify you'll need a computer monitor output and a downscaler to use it with anything analog i know that was a lot uh i hope i was accurate in my descriptions of everything and everyone here uh like i said everything i talked about is listed in the description if you're a video gear maker and i didn't talk about you in this video i'm very sorry please do leave me a message or a comment especially if you're making analog video gear like on the scale that you have it on a website and you're selling it to other people maybe in the future i can do an updated video i certainly am thinking about doing more in-depth videos on the people i've talked about lastly there are the subreddits r slash video bending and r slash video synthesis as well as the forum scanlines.xyz that's dedicated to video art those are all three great communities to get involved in because they're full of people that also like video art so yeah that's all i've got to say um thank you for watching stay safe out there be creative and peace out

Channel: YOVOZOL

Views: 39,603

Keywords: video synth, analog video, circuit bending, glitch art, video art, tachyons+, hardware, big pauper, tachyons plus, circuit bent, video gear, lzx, hypno, sleepy circuits, modular, diy, guide, list, glitch processor, video glitches, modified, analog, effects

Id: wFEeg8bo3yk

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Fortune188]

As someone who's been lurking on this sub looking for more info on video synth art (total noob yet professional digital editor), this is super helpful!

[u/1969-in-the-sunshine]

and i shouted out this subreddit as well as r/VideoBending . would love to know your thoughts!

[u/Zoolake1]

Man I loved that video! I've been wanting to get into this for awhile but I've always felt overwhelmed. This really helped a lot!

[u/rickydingo]

Saving this for sure

[u/Ricktron5]

what fest had Deakin and Sugar Candy Mountain?

[u/RyanCelsius]

This is great

[u/VanLife42069]

Yeah great work. Thanks for making this.

[u/gentlereturn]

fantastic work, thanks for the video