The Creepy Beauty of VCR Errors
killscreen.com
killscreen.com
"To discover his glitch art, Johnson plugs short, repeating videos into an Xbox 360 through its USB port, and then feeds that into a VCR. The output is projected on to an old CRT TV he bought from a thrift store. He then manipulates a frayed RCA cable that runs from the Xbox to the VCR while it’s recording in order to interrupt the signal. “The colors tear, images start to warp, and still images start to come alive with organic motion,” Johnson says. “I’ve recently looked into some circuit bending boxes that can be an intermediate between the signal and the recording, but I like the lack of control I have with just jamming some wires together.”"
He's using a VCR to capture the resulting distorted video, but another digital device with an RCA input line would work just as well.
This is related to the mechanical design of VHS tapes and the player. VCRs use helical scanning. What this means is that each frame of video is recorded on the VHS tape in a linear track that runs diagonally across the tape. Inside the VHS player, you may remember seeing a drum in the back that seems at an off angle. This is the helical read drum: it spins at a very high speed as the tape is pulled around it, and the combination of the slanted head drum spinning and the tape moving along it at a lower speed results in the heads mounted to the drum tracing these diagonal lines on the tape.
The TV draws to the screen continuously, 29.97 times per second, and draws whatever is coming on the analog video input at that moment. So for the image to remain when you have paused the tape, the VCR must continuously play the same frame back to the television. This requires keeping the drum moving and alternating the tape drive (the capstan motor) back and forth very rapidly to try to keep the same helical track aligned with the head over and over. This never quite works right, leaving a noisy signal that often has a bit of a shake as the tracking goes in and out each frame. Additionally, the capstan rapidly switching directions can damage the tape, which is why most VCRs will switch to Stop after being paused for a few minutes.
Laserdiscs had this problem much worse, as there was simply no practical way to get the disc back to the beginning of a frame quickly enough to rescan it. Higher-end laserdisc players could show a freeze-frame, but they did it with an electronic framebuffer that was digitally replayed to the TV. I wonder if there may have been higher-end VCRs with this same technology, but I haven't seen one.
This is what I'm exploiting with the paused glitches. When you interrupt the signal between the source and the VCR, you end up getting strange artifacts in the paused image. Because the image wasn't fully transferred to the tape, you're basically laying bare the extent of the distortion. Another interesting bit is when the color data goes, and all that remains is black and white information, the pause state gets even funkier. It moves and jitters when paused, and even tears off the screen at times.
It's all sorts of fascinating.
I recall having one that did a digital snapshot instead, however this was the early 90's and I'm struggling to recall the manufacturer & model. Ferguson, I think...
DVDs obviously existed back then, but most stores were still a mix of them and VHS (plus the occasionaly Laserdisc Pocket, futilely seeking a return on investment). We opted to go through all the movies on VHS - basically, a DVD fail was often 'all or nothing' while a VHS tape might scroll or stutter (and indeed, 58 hours in the machine overheated and gave us no visuals for a few scary minutes) but they would usually keep rolling and come good.
Now of course it's all digital, and my wonderful VHS collection taunts me every time I step into my office as I convert them one-by-one.
One can only wonder -- will we notice before it's too late?
1) an output space that is vastly larger than could be exhaustively explored on human timescales
2) the proportion of the output space that can be quickly accessed by an artist can be increased through practice.
Many glitches score poorly on one or both of these... Often additional practice with the glitch does not increase the artist's ability to address larger portions of the output space. A completely random glitch would be the worst case scenario there.
But many glitches do fulfill both requirements, and there's no reason those couldn't be used to creat great art.
Real art requires artistry, which requires practice, which introduces divergence, which means you end up with different works. What you're thinking of is people slapping together the same junk over and over, but none of that is art.
It might be done in a medium that has properties #1 and #2 so the medium is OK but the artist isn't practicing so the quality of the work is junk.
As for "real art", how does divergence stem from practice? There are plenty of great works, say a Rauchenberg or a Turrell, who's beauty comes not from the labor of practice, but from the alignment of concept, subject, and vision. Conversely, there are plenty of brilliant artists who fall-off after many years of practice - I think of Hockney's photo collages.
My original point, which I stand by, is that the use VHS warbling is completely mined and tired. Should somebody come by and employ it in a radical way which communicates new meaning then great. But, for myself and many others, it makes me cringe a little inside.
Divergence stems from practice because when two people put thousands of hours into the same task, specifics of the individuals and their environment inevitably become calcified in their skills and process.
That all said, I think we're on the same page. The stereotype you are applying to VHS art is not unfounded. I just generally hate stereotypes and I think they hold me back, so I try to question them as much as I can and use better ways of seeing when I can.