Amiga Commodore

After looking at multiple pieces of equipment, I landed on the fact that JJ's blog actually talks fondly about the Amiga Commodore, a computer system that was used for gaming and daily life but had a program on it called a Video Toaster that took live footage and distorted it within the computer.

I'm sure now after watching the demos for the Video Toaster softwares on youtube, that the Video Toaster software is definitely the thing that was being used a lot in the 80s. While The Commodore was used for everything under the moon (making titles, backgrounds, games, etc) the Toaster software was used for adding that extra edge to videos.

Amiga Commodore/Spaceballs - State of The Art 

Go To Work - Video with Toaster Effects

So knowing now that Video Toaster is how people made these frame by frame freeze effects makes me wonder how many other videos use this effect?
If the Video Toaster was also similar to a Slit Scan and had the same features?

Similar Videos and Connected genre

I scoured the internet with my taste in music and little knowledge about video art and found a variety of videos that were either using the same program/analog synthesizer or were similar in the genre they were invoking.

Zlad! - Electronik Supersonik

This video was originally entered into a Eurovision contest circa early 2000s, and was essentially a meme for a while due to its absurdity. But what is important here is that there is a video synthesizer or video feedback machine that is being used to add special effects. It is also being filmed with something from the 80s to give it that specific aesthetic. Surprisingly this video is not in anyway related to Telefantasy. However there was no credit for who the producer was.

Smut Cave - The Rockafire Explosion!

Smut Cave is a web series ran by a man named Spelunker, and is about showcasing weird sex fetishes. The reason I added it to this list was because it was similar to Max Headroom in the sense that there was random things happening throughout the episode. Sort of like it was intentionally random access television, which is something that JJ has specifically said she grew up with.

(FatherLongLegs/WonderBeardTapes) Cop Magnet - Thinking Highly Of You

I haven't figured out yet if FatherLongLegs is a curator of these videos, but he is similar to the video artist named Beta Carnage (of CarnageTV on youtube/vimeo) they have an assortment of betamax tapes they have kept for years and take weird, strange and off things and put them to music. Black Moth Super Rainbow and Tobacco are frequent musical collaborators with them. 

TONETTA - THE NUTCRACKER

Tonetta is straight up a modern musician who makes youtube music videos in his house. He's a recluse artist who sings about fetishes. (There is a reoccurring theme here.....) He intentionally films on older equipment to make the 80s effect going on in all of his videos. He's never talked about his aesthetic but I personally think he makes his videos look like this because his music sounds very static and noisey.

Emily Youcis - Tiger Mug

Emily Youcis is an animator who is famous for being the Pistachio girl at baseball games with a funny accent. She is also a collaborator with Smut Cave and is actually the reason I looked up Smut Cave's work because Emily's videos have a random access edge to them that is very very obvious. Also playing around with the green screen and edges is interesting to me because it adds to the Telefantasy aesthetic of having visible edges. 

Experimental Half Hour

This youtube account is actually affiliated w/ Telefantasy but not directly. They use similar equipment and also commission a studio from denmark to use analog equipment for them during live performances.

Almost directly you can see the influence and also the direct hand of Jennifer's work, and also of a piece of analog equipment that is being used more and more in their work.

What is the purpose of this technology being used in live footage? Possibly adds to the aesthetic they are trying to convey, something beautiful and stopped in time forever?

Light House

Stereo Total, Harmony Molina

Anklepants & Rubbish Fairy (NSFW)

A tour of a Media Lab (LA 2050)

Max Headroom

I was stalking Ms.Stratford's twitter account and noticed her icon was of her impression of Max Headroom. When I looked it up on youtube, I noticed while it was accurate for the aesthetic I was researching, it also included makeshift effects by having someone rotate metal in the background. Which looked like a special effect in the youtube thumbnail. Regardless the guerrilla attitude of the footage combined with the 80s aesthetic probably influenced Telefantasy's videos.

Max Headroom is originally an AI created as a tv host. And he would have a distorted voice, and would be accompanied by flashy motion graphics in the background. The entire Max Headroom tv series was on around the late 1980s, and has this interesting avant garde  edge to it.

Looking at this made me think that if I observed the influences more, I could connect the studio's videos to its influences which were essentially influenced by their machines, since video synthesizers and video feedback art was not necessarily a popular medium. (But was rapidly getting popular once the 80s hit)

Max Headroom Clip

Max Headroom Incident (Pirating Incident)

Toni Basil Inspiration

Toni Basil (September 22, 1943) is a choreographer/dancer and also a director of a numerous amount of music videos. She is most popular for her video for Hey Mickey, and for the Talking Heads Once In A Lifetime choreography.

JJ Stratford had Toni Basil's videos on her blog on Blogger: http://jjstratford.blogspot.com/

She says Toni Basil is an influence to her and someone whose video work she admires, and since I saw the immediate correlation between her Talking Heads video and the work that Jennifer has done, I realized that there must be at least two pieces of analog equipment that were so popular in the 80s because they essentially did everything. (i.e  Slit Scan, video feedback that generated patterns, freeze frames)

The color palettes are also similar as is the intensity in makeup. I can see where the inspiration came from when it comes to Toni Basil's video work.

Over My Head

Shopping

Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime

Slit Scan

I discovered something called a Slit Scan which is essentially a process/synthesizer/effect that makes things distort on camera. According to youtube comments, this was a very popular effect used in the 80s to make the graphics on screen seem very high end. There are modern applications that can replicate the process now with ease but back in the day it was a step by step process that was very meticulous and involved angling a camera at a specific position to make the light look like a slit.
Also, it was frame by frame. So you had to do the process over and over again until you got an animation. So essentially it was stop motion with photography and special effects.

Here is a Chrome Experiments one that you can use in your browser: Slit Scan Camera


Some Slit Scan examples:

Slit Scan Camera

 

Slit Scan Carnival

Slit Scan Selfies

So in relation to the Slit Scan, back in the 70s/80s - today there is a company that used to use the Slit Scan in their title animations. Klein&Animation is a design studio that makes both 3D and 2D animations for commercials and titles. They were big in the 80s specifically because the things they were creating were highly influential in the Motion Graphics world. (Since 3D was starting to become a big thing for a few amount of people who were learning how to use the technology for commercial use)

Here are a few of Klein&Animation's demo reels from the 80s.

Klein&Animation Demo Reel 1979

Klein&Animation Demo Reel 1982

So, after looking at these, it gives me a better insight to why video synthesizers and this technology was so popular in the 80s. I think Ms.Stratford understands that these machines once had very specific uses, and now with her own work they are given purpose again but with less limitations. There are elements that look like Slit Scan, and directly are Slit Scan effects in those videos, and understanding that these were used to make typography dynamic is interesting, because now they are used to distort people and images. 

List of Video Synthesizers ala Wikipedia

In order for me to figure out what this aesthetic is, I have to find out specifically what types of analog equipment Telefantasy Studio uses to create them. I started from looking at a wikipedia article talking about video art and then just started clicking on the related articles until I found something that sounded like it was related. (It was Video Synthesizers)

Anyway, Here is the link to the article, i'm going to copy and paste the list of video synthesizers.

• Vasulka
• Spectron – Analog-Digital hybrid, Richard Monkhouse – EMS.
• Videokalos Video Synthesizer
• Image Articulator (Vasulka, Schier, Dosch) real time digital data ops by S181 addressing by Am2901
• Kangaroo Giant Box
• Fluidigeo
• Spectre/Spectron (Richard Monkhouse, Electronic Music Studios UK)
• Video Toaster for Amiga Computer
• Atari Video Music
• Milkymist One
• Jones Modular Video Synthesizer
• LZX Visionary

So anyway, this isn't just a list, it is also a very good guide for me to figure out what sorts of things that JJ might own herself because she says she owns quite a collection. 

I'm going to look up demo reels of these different types of synthesizers to figure out which ones closely match the types of materials she probably uses at her studio.

Finding out equipment is basically figuring out how to achieve the aesthetic, which is big because most people do not understand that in order to look analog, you do have to go analog. And while I still have not figured out if there is a specific name for this aesthetic, I do think that its visual correlation really is avant garde Dara Birnbaum meets Mary Ellen Bute right now in regards to moving colors. 

Michael Betancourt

Michael Betancourt is a video artist and journalist who writes articles about Motion graphics. He has a lot of background in glitch art and that is where I wanted to start connecting the dots. While Telefantasy's work is not specifically glitch art, the work that is being created could be identified as glitch by someone who is not aware of what specific analog computer/films can do those specific effects. Nonetheless, I wanted to look at Betancourt's work because he is taking this non-narrative and adding glitch to it to make it visually interesting even though it's "broken".

THE KODAK MOMENT

Antag|Protag

Helios|Divine

Telefantasy Studios

Lets start with my main muse, a place to start. Telefantasy Studios is located in Hollywood, California and is essentially a media lab/studio dedicated to analog equipment experimentation. Jennifer Juniper Stratford (JJ Stratford) is the studio director and has worked with big names like Odd Future and Gerard Way.

Established in 2004, the studio takes old analog equipment, video synthesizers, Amiga Commodores, and Video toasting software to create footage that resembles 80s Dara Birnbaum meets the Max Headroom incident mixed with new wave synth pop music.


Here are a few videos i'm going to be referencing in my journey.

Moca Lotion

TYPICAL MAN ON BEACH

MILLIONS

Introduction

I have very few designers that I am heavily influenced by, and most of those individuals are visual communication designers. However, Jennifer Juniper Stratford and her motion design studio Telefantasy Studios is just eye-catching beauty. Using analog film equipment that has been disposed of, equipment from cable and random access television, this studio takes avant garde style to a new level.

This blog's main objective is, "What is this and is there more of it?" That could possibly be the most simple way to define all of this, but ideally this blog should be an archive of this specific vintage 80s aesthetic and the artists who have either been pioneers in it or new contemporary artists who are defining it. (or both, since nothing is original)