We are saddened to learn of the passing of Nam-June Paik.

Bob Moog, John Simonton, and now Nam-June Paik. The world is a lesser place.

Things have been very quiet around here at Keeling Video Labs. However, the cone of silence is preparing to dissipate. I've recently moved into a new building with more lab space. In a few weeks, I hope to restart research and development of the Keeling Video Machine.

Watch this space. More updates coming soon.

Residency at the Experimental TV Center. Report, photos, and vidcaps right here.

I saw Mission of Burma at the Somerville Theater last night. They had a giant video screen behind the stage playing random video clips (which I think they said was being produced by "Dr. T" (which may be this guy)).

Every time I looked at the screen, I imagined how to reproduce the effects with analog circuitry. Obsessed I am.

Decision time: I think that I want to do all of the effects processing in RGB space. At the output end of the synth, I'll need a bank of synchronized RGB-to-NTSC converters (synchronized to make fades, wipes, keys, and split-screens possible). Here are some options:

• Analog Devices AD725. Disadvantage: pixelization doesn't look very "analog".
• JROK's RGB to TV converter for Jamma video games. Disadvantage: as the web page says: "Schematics and parts lists are NOT available."
• Two Bit Score's RGB to NTSC converter for Jamma video games. Disadvantage: $199.
• Converter.tv's RGB to Video Converter. Disadvantage: shipping from Australia.

Since the JVC KM-2000 is an 8-channel 3-bus mixer, I may eventually want a bank of eight RGB-to-NTSC converters. Thus, $200 is outrageous. Besides it may not be possible to chroma sync the outputs from the last three options. I'm going to start with the AD725. I may evaluate the other options at a later date.

Maybe I should just start with B&W.

Holy crap! Look what I found!

In case you can't read the fine print, that's a JVC KM-2000 Color Special Effects Generator. Eight inputs, three buses, video mixer, switcher, and chroma keyer, all in one. Given what I paid for it, I really don't expect it to work. It's missing the cables that connect the control panel to the rack-mount box. However, I look forward to seeing what it can do.

My very own SuperNova-12 look-alike seems much closer today.

Oh. Shiny. Analog music synthesis is so distracting.

I received my copy of the Severed Heads Paleolithic DVD in the mail today. Viewing this DVD is serious academic research. Unfortunately, the first thing that I read was a little discouraging to my master plan. In the liner notes to Petrol (live), Tom Ellard writes

The hope was that the control voltages that ran the music could also be supplied to the video synthesizer such that an analogue between note and image could be presented. There was no obvious result and so we discarded the idea for hand tuning.

I've been collecting random junk (basically, anything with a "video out" port or a bunch of BNC connectors) for a couple years now, with the hope of eventually building an analog video synth. I've been bidding on eBay, combing yard sales, attending swap meets, and dumpster diving. I have quite a pile of boxes in my basement. Now I need to get my butt into gear and start building circuits. Real soon now.

Although digital video processing has won the "professional" video market, analog synthesizers still have much to offer the video artist, perhaps now more than ever. Decades of MacPaint and PhotoShop have not decreased usage of the artist's palette and brush (truly analog instruments); likewise, decades of Video Toasters and Matrix movies will not decrease the artist's use of analog video synthesizers. The bandwidth and speed of modern analog building blocks enables the construction of powerful and flexible video processing modules. High-speed analog circuits are now available that Paik and Abe could have only dreamed of in the 1970s.

My interest is in the design, operation, and history of analog video synthesizers. Lately, some students and I have been investigating analog video synthesis as educational laboratory activities. I have grandiose plans to build a modular analog video synthesizer, capable of generating patterns and images in NTSC video, based on vintage personal computers and simple effect boxes.

My interest in analog video synthesis is inspired by the work of Stephen Jones of Severed Heads. I'll be really satisfied if I can eventually produce anything similar to his videography.

• The Stephen Jones video synths are very inspirational
• The Fairlight Electric Paintbox is a simple, but clever, colorizer
• The SuperNova-12 is an impressive monolith
• The original SuperNova-12 page is badly brain-damaged by Microsoft FrontPage

I am an analog circuit hacker. I have been interested in analog music synthesis since I built some PAiA kits in the 1970s. I now have a small collection of analog noise-making junk that I enjoy playing with.

Sometime in 2002 (while surfing the web for distractions from my thesis), I stumbled across the Video Synths Homage Page at the AudioVisualizers web site. I was immediately hooked: here is a synthesis problem that is at least 1000 times harder than analog audio synthesis.

• If nothing else, video processing circuits need bandwidths of MHz instead of kHz. Garden-variety op amps don't cut it.
• As the rash of "circuit bent" toys on eBay demonstrates, just about any circuit can be coaxed into producing audio noise. Video signals are harder to generate.
• In general, music can survive the effects of arbitrary distortion. Video signals cannot. In video processing, the synchronization pulses (their amplitude, shape, and timing) must remain mostly untouched.
• Video signals can only be mixed (faded, wiped, keyed, or split-screened) if they are already synchronized. Audio signals can be mixed with a resistor network.
• Random noise is interesting to listen to. I listen to a lot of it. Random video induces seizures.

An interesting analog-music/analog-video fusion project would be the production of abstract video images by the synchronization of a video synth to music synths using the same control voltages.

Yes, I did totally steal this color scheme from the DNA Lounge. Sorry about that. I'm a sucker for the green-on-black motif. It reminds me of my first computer (a CBM 2001). Good times. Good times.