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Enter The Strange And Trippy World Of Old-School Video Synthesizers

video synthesizer nam jun paik

The groundbreaking work of 20th century video artists was avant-garde yet delightfully strange.

Between browser-based multimedia synthesizers and artificial-intelligence-generated music videos, the amount of high-quality video graphics we encounter every day makes it hard to imagine a time when video synthesizing and processing was difficult or avant-garde. But much like audio synths, the now in-the-box creative programs we take for granted wouldn’t be possible without the work of a select group of boundary-pushing experimentalists whose ideas quickly outpaced the technology of the time.

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This article focuses on the work of pioneers like Nam June Paik, whose early “guerilla television” work with the first consumer video cameras eventually led to the creation of the world’s first DIY and admittedly “sloppy” video synthesizer. To learn how video synthesis went from skeletons of electrons dancing on a blank screen to the crisp, complex creations of today—and to stop along the way and learn about the Scanimate, the synthesizer putting that eerie, washed-out glow on all of your favorite videos from the ’80s—check out the full article on We Are The Mutants here.

Read more: Watch mind-melting visuals created by an 80s video synthesizer

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