This post was started two weeks ago, but delayed due to illness. (sniffle)
Having a lingering cold takes me back to those days when I’d be home from school sick, watching Quebec School Telecasts, TVO and PBS’ lineup of 70s-tastic locally-produced educational shows. Many of them featured trippy, pre-CGI electronic opening graphics and analog-baroque theme songs; this one, for Thinkabout, might have inspired an entire Boards of Canada album. Or three.
Not that I’m advocating drug use, but down a cupful of Nyquil before clicking on the video to get the full effect.
The graphics were produced using a then-state-of-the-art video processor called the Scanimate System — built by Computer Image Corporation of Denver, CO. A Scanimate was a huge, wall-filling modular video synthesizer that would allow images to be scanned, converted into discrete video fields, overlaid, chromakeyed, tinted, animated, modulated, and manipulated, with transitions sequenced via an early digital computer. Here’s a short clip (no sound) of it in action, converting text printed on paper into dynamic animated characters.
In the 1970s and 1980s, exactly eight high-end video post-production facilities had them, including Image West in Los Angeles (staffed by ex-Computer Image personnel) who would go on to do broadcast graphics for nearly every major television network in North America, and later would end up pioneering software at many big-name computer-graphics R&D and software companies.
Sesame Street and The Electric Company made extensive use of it, as in this short video touting the letter H. It was also used in the realm of video art. Enthusiasts still produce original Scanimate videos, and recently released a 2-DVD documentary and showreel set, The Dream Machine. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: art, electronica, scanimate, videos
