Video Circuit Bending Workshop
So the annual Darklight festival happened again in Dublin, one of the events I attended there was a video circuit bending workshop by Karl Klomp organised by DATA. Over two days participants found out about uncovering visual glitches in video effects hardware and then hardwiring and controlling these. Apart from distorting the inputted video we were also shown methods of hacking these machines text / graphics chip (the part that generates teletext text or channel information) and how to sync this up to an external audio source, making an audio visualiser.
It was a lot of use for my work, I found out a bit more about how all the components work and how to read the circuit board, also picked up some handy soldering tips. The piece of video hardware I had to play with was a Vanguard VA-445 A/V Edit System, now with 4 externally housed switches added to trigger off video glitches. Here’s a good interview about Mr Klomps work from makezine and some youtube footage of another video bending workshop.