video synthesizer

Here’s another Sunday Synth Jam for you, hamageddon’s Nostromo – an audiovisual synth jam featuring Edirol CG8 Visual Synthesizer visuals and music by Klankombinat

This is a demo of Atari Video Music, a light synthesizer, by Electronic musician David Talento.

A Cyndustries/Modcan modular synth was used as the audio source. All audio and video changes done live in real time with no editing.

The Atari Video Music was introduced by Atari Inc. in 1976, and designed by the creator of the home version of Pong, Robert Brown. The idea was to create a visual exploration that could be implemented into a Hi-Fi stereo system.

As the legend goes, when Atari was on tour promoting the device, a Sears representative asked what they were smoking when they invented it. With that, a technician stepped forward holding up a lit joint.

The unit was in production for only a year.

If you’ve used the Atari Video Music system, leave a comment with your thoughts!

via legionhwp, wikipidia

It looks like analog video synthesis is starting to see the surge in experimentation that the Internet has brought to audio synthesis.

This is a preview of a Sergio Martinez’s DIY FPGA-based video synthesizer. Martinez connected the FPGA to an old computer monitor, and then recorded the images with a cheap webcam. The coloured dots are the  phosphor sub-pixels of the monitor.

Anybody know of combination audio/video synths? It would be interesting to see how you could combine the two to have the audio synth modulating the video.

Between 1971 and 1973, Dan Sandin designed and built the Sandin Image Processor (IP) a patch programmable analog computer for real-time manipulation of video inputs.

In other words – a modular synth for video.

The whole video is great – Sandin is a great communicator and the video reminds me about some of the great things of the seventies – like researchers in Viking hats.

This is one of the movies that document the early history of the research that resulted in the creation of the EVL Lab. Dan Sandin explains, in general terms, the functionality of the Sandin Analogue Image Processor (IP).

Sandin was an advocate of education and espoused a non-commercial philosophy, emphasizing a public access to processing methods and the machines that assist in generating the images. Accordingly, he placed the circuit board layouts for the IP with a commercial circuit board company and freely published schematics and other documentation.

The IP is a general-purpose patch programmable analogue computer, which is different from a regular digital computer, and is optimized to process video/television signals and sound. The video is processed through the IP “live” so that the viewer is able to see the effect on video signals. Initially the video is B&W, at the end Sandin debuts the ‘Color IP’.

The money quote: “Turn your sets to color now!

via videothing

OT: I’ve been getting more and more interested recently with developments in the area of generating video from or effected by audio.

The VGA Expropriator, an interesting DIY analog video synthesizer, caught my eye:

This “VGA Expropriator” will be the first in a series of proprietary analogue hardware devices which seek to explore the possibilities of digital/analogue hybrid technology in video/audio performance and studio production contexts. The first offering here is essentially a new design with its creative process making ample use of circuit-bending methodologies.

The main function of this device is to synthesize 2 audio inputs with a VGA input allowing audio waveforms to be viewed on a computer display. The results are very much like that of a dual-trace oscilloscope with vertical rather than horizontal beams. Internal patches can be used to combine the beams in a wide variety of ways making for a great many imagery possibilities.

There are some excellent seventiestastic video effects in the demos at the site.