No Bad Memories

Delete: A Design History of Computer Vapourware

2016-01-29T00:00:00Z

I recently had the opportunity to review Paul Atkinson’s book Delete: A Design History of Computer Vapourware.

Delete: A Design History of Computer Vapourware

Delete is highly recommended for those interested in computer hardware design or retrocomputing. The volume is packed with gorgeous images of computers that were announced but never commercially produced. Atkinson’s interviews with the designers and executives closest to these unrealized products are fascinating.

My in-depth review of Delete can be found in the latest issue of Design and Culture. The PDF is available for free online. You can also browse the photo collection of former Sinclair Research designer Rick Dickinson, who worked on a number of the unrealized products chronicled in Delete.

Hosting a mutual-aid fundraiser on Discord

2021-01-09T00:00:00Z

In November of 2020, the boxes began to really stack up. A few by the hallway, then a looming tower near the kitchen. Spurred by months of COVID-19-induced isolation at home, I'd put myself on a mission to finally go through all my possessions and throw or give away what was no longer needed. Around the same time, my thoughts turned to making a charitable donation. Given the difficult circumstances 2020 brought, I wanted to be thoughtful about making a positive impact.

One thought led to another, and eventually I came up with the idea to host an online silent auction/garage sale to raise money for a good cause. I had four main objectives for the silent auction:

to facilitate sharing and rehoming of items to others in a quarantine-safe way,
to raise money for a charitable cause (in my case, Austin Mutual Aid),
to create a unique avenue to connect and have fun with friends remotely, and
to help activate others in the rewarding act of giving.

The event ran for two weeks in December and raised $1,646. Now that I've had a few weeks to reflect on it, I'm sharing a bit of a post-mortem on the event in case it's useful for others wanting to undertake something similar.

How much would you pay for the Internet?

Event overview

Here is how I prepared for and ran the event.

Sorted through my items. I went through the boxes and found the fun stuff: instruments, movies, etc. Other items were taken to mutual aid centers or Goodwill.
Set up a Discord server. This was pretty easy to figure out on my own, but there is also a guide to setting up a Discord server. I created four top-level channels: #👋・welcome, #📢・rules, #⛲・wishing-well, and #☕・chat. I also created a channel category called "Auction items."
Decided on and posted auction rules. The auction would work like eBay, complete with a minimum starting bid (usually $1). Participants would post a dollar amount in the corresponding items' channel to make a bid. After two weeks, bidding would close, and all money raised would go to the charitable organization. Additionally, I pledged to match every bid dollar for dollar. Anyone wanting to donate money without bidding on items could post dollar amounts to the #⛲・wishing-well channel, where I also matched donation amounts 1-for-1. (You can read the complete rules here.)
Grouped items into thematic bundles. Instead of having participants bid on single items, I grouped them into themed bundles. A bass guitar was paired with an amplifier and live music DVD to form a "rock bundle." A pile of 15 mystery LPs was billed as a "crate-digger bundle." Each bundle got its own channel in the "Auction items" category where participants would post bids.
Added descriptions to bundle channels In each bundle channel, I posted photographs of the items, a description, and the minimum starting bid.

Photograph of spoon rest and brownies in the cooking bundle, which also included a collection of cookbooks.

Invited friends via Discord or email. I invited about 35 local friends to keep things manageable and made sure I knew each person personally in case there was any issue.
Supervised bidding for the run of the event (2 weeks). I occasionally posted updates if certain bundles hadn't yet received bids, for example.
Collected bids via PayPal and Venmo, and sent double that to charitable organization.
Delivered bundles to winners. I offered curbside pickup or delivery based on the winner's preference.

Screenshot of Discord channel listing

Learnings

I went into the silent auction with low expectations, just because it was a pretty experimental idea, and I had no idea how things would play out. Plus, the extent of my prior experience with fundraising was selling Girl Scout cookies as a child. Would there be bidding wars? Zero interest? In retrospect, I was really pleased with the outcomes. It was fun. And it was great how much we were able to raise just with unwanted items in our own homes. Here are some assorted observations, what I think went well, and what I'd do differently next time.

Why Discord? I had initially considered running the silent auction through something like Google Sheets or Forms, but I wanted to be sure that everyone participating could see bids without modifying them. I also wanted an avenue for conversation. Discord was my next candidate for handling this. It could also allow participants to set up notifications if desired. I think it generally worked well. Now that the auction is done, I can simply close the server.
Ask friends to contribute unique items. When I look back at which bundles generated the most excitement and bids, it was clear that one-of-a-kind items were most popular. Bundles with locally-made ceramics, zines, or instruments were among the more desired. If you have friends willing to contribute art, homemade desserts, or services (such as lessons), do reach out to them with plenty of advance notice to see if they have something they'd like to contribute to the cause.

Resources

Want to run an event like this yourself? Here are a few additional resources.

Additionally, I've reproduced the rules I posted to my server; feel free to modify these for your own use.

Bidding starts at 12:01 AM on December 4 and ends at 11:59 PM on December 18. For each bundle, the person who has posted the highest bid in that bundle's channel when bidding closes will win the bundle and agrees to pay their highest bid amount.

Editing bids is not permitted.

Each auction bundle contains a curated selection of multiple items united by a theme. Bundles cannot be split or rearranged. If you are the winner of a bundle, let me know if there's something in the bundle you don't want, and I will donate it to Goodwill.

Most items are gently used except where indicated. Photos should help address concerns about item condition. But also, like, this is a garage sale. Everything is as-is, no exchanges, returns, or refunds.

Winners will be messaged on Discord to arrange for payment and delivery (within Austin only). I'll donate all proceeds and match them dollar for dollar to Austin Mutual Aid's "Kick the Cold" fundraising campaign. They're halfway to their $20,000 goal! https://www.gofundme.com/f/kick-the-cold-austin-mutal-aid

If you want to donate cash (and have your donation matched) but don't want to bid on anything, head over to the #⛲・wishing-well channel.

This is meant to provide a lighthearted way to raise money for a good cause while keeping unused items out of landfills and dusty garages. While healthy competition is encouraged, please be mindful that each of us is in unique circumstances in these awful times. Don't feel obligated to overbid or participate at all. And don't be a jerk. I know you won't, though. ♥

In memoriam: Bubblegum (200?-2021)

2021-02-11T00:00:00Z

We lost a very good boy today: Bubblegum passed away due this afternoon after experiencing heart problems, but essentially, of old age.

Bubblegum had to wear this neck pillow once to keep from scratching, and much to my surprise, he loved having a pillow that went wherever he did.

Bubblegum was a pit bull adopted in 2014, a few days before I began teaching at the University of Texas. We don't know much about his life before then except that it was rough. He had bullet wounds and broken teeth when he was rescued from a kill shelter in Bastrop. (Shout out to Austin Dog Rescue for taking him in!)

He quickly adapted to a more pampered life and reveled in getting as much affection as possible. Everyone who met him got to witness this: he frequently head-butted his way into head rubs and wasn't shy about nestling his entire 70-pound self into new friends' laps. And, of course, his patented move was circling in front of someone while whipping his tail furiously, a maneuveur I came to call the "waggin' wheel." He wagged that tail every day, up unti the very end.

We're going to miss you, buddy. RIP.

Bubblegum had exactly two moods: Blorpin' (shown here) and waggin'.

Cleaning my workspace with WORMS

2022-04-15T00:00:00Z

The studio where I do art and electronics projects tends to get very messy very quickly. When I'm working on something, my focus is dialed up to 11, and I avoid anything that might distract me or take me out of the moment. That means scraps fall to the floor, tape remnants get stuck to the arm of my chair, coffee cups pile around, and supplies and tools are abandoned on the nearest surface.

What does this have to do with WORMS, though?

By the time I've snapped out of my Art Trance and begun to assess the damage, the task of cleaning feels deeply daunting. My ADHD brain, struggling to get a start on the task, throws me into a negative feedback loop of my own creating. What's worse, my escape hatch is often to walk away from the problem entirely, leaving the mess for poor Future Me!

I wished there was some kind of formula or simple structure I could use to help me breakdown the tasks needed for tidying a chaotic workspace. Ideally, it would be flexible enough work for different kinds of spaces... sometimes a tabletop, sometimes a room, sometimes a bookshelf. So, after some trial and error, I created one that works well for me. It starts with the tasks that require the least decision making in order to build progress and momentum quickly. I'm sharing the strategy here in case it's useful to anyone else.

In this system, cleaning up a workspace is divided into five sequential stages: waste, out-of-towners, residents, miscellany, and style. (That spells, you guessed it, WORMS.) I admit that it's a little odd to refer to my art supplies as out-of-towners and residents. But the idea that my workspace is a little village with guests and residents is a funny, Animal Crossing-inspired mental image that has stuck in my mind.

Each stage of WORMS is done completely with respect to the workspace before moving on to the next.

WASTE: Items that are obviously trash should be put in the appropriate recycling, compost, or trash bin. If you look at something for more than two seconds and aren't sure if it's trash, leave it for a later stage.
OUT-OF-TOWNERS: If you know where an item should go and it isn't in this workspace, it's an out-of-towner. Take it back to where it belongs. The coffee cup goes in the dishwasher, the jacket goes in the hall closet, etc. If you look at something for more than two seconds and aren't sure where it's supposed to go, leave it for a later stage.
RESIDENTS: If you know where an item belongs and it is in this workspace, it's a resident! Put it back in its home. Scissors go in the Kirby's Adventure cup, paper clips go in the blue box, etc. If you look at something for more than two seconds and aren't sure where it's supposed to go, leave it for a later stage.
MISCELLANY: Hopefully, your space is looking less chaotic, and you can more mindfully assess the things you weren't sure what to do with before. In instances where there are a lot of miscellaneous items, it might be helpful to repeat the out-of-towners vs. residents exercise to see if you can at least get items put back in the right room or general vicinity.
STYLE: Finally, arrange the decor, wipe up the dust, turn on the lava lamp, or do whatever puts the finishing touches on your space. Celebrate the achievement!

I've been a messmaker my whole life, and that's probably never going to change. But this somewhat silly mnemonic has helped me get over the anxiety of cleaning it all up. It seems to work especially well for workspaces and small rooms that have eclectic contents. After doing the WORMS thing, I'm at least ready for the next fun project and the mess that will inevitably ensue.

Printmaking as play

2022-05-17T00:00:00Z

As you might know from my past research on the sticker-printing Casio Loopy game console and Barbie Fashion Designer, I have a special interest in games and toys that incorporate printing or image making as a play mechanic.

Printmaking toys make creation immediate, convenient, and playful, often at the expense of the quality, quantity, permanence, or general perceived value of the resulting image. Toys require neither prerequisite training nor access to specialty facilities.

For me, these are benefits printmaking toys have over their "real" counterparts. Like Sadie Benning with the Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera or Nullsleep with the Nintendo Game Boy, I'm drawn to the use of post-consumer toys to achieve activist, countercultural, and recuperative ends.

Still image from Girl Power (Sadie Benning, 1992)

Recently, I became curious about the space between printmaking toy and printmaking instrument, and whether I could create something for my own use that was suitably simple, expressive, and, of course, fun.

Barbie Fashion Designer allowed players to use the computer to design and print paper clothing for Barbie dolls. The software came with markers and paints for further decoration. It was one of the best-selling software titles of 1996.

Close, but not quite: Print Gocco

The Print Gocco was a popular at-home printing device produced by Japanese company Riso Kagaku starting in the late 1970s. The process was something like stamping-meets-screenprinting and allowed users to produce small color prints for greeting cards and textiles. While marketed to adults, its chunky design and ease of use gave it a toy-like quality. It's believed that at the height of its popularity, one of three Japanese homes had a Print Gocco device.

I learned about the Print Gocco in the mid-2000s, just as it was being discontinued by the manufacturer. Jill Bliss had just begun the grassroots "Save Gocco" campaign, and an online market developed for remaining deadstock of the device's proprietary consumables.

Seeing my interest in the device, my partner very thoughtfully gifted me a complete Print Gocco set from eBay, which I promptly... stored away for years. After all, the consumables are getting so hard to find! It's collectible! It wasn't until I saw a second Print Gocco at a local resale shop a few months ago that I was inspired to pull mine out of its unnecessary retirement and put it to use.

The Print Gocco is very easy to use, relatively tidy, and produces acceptable, if not quirky, color prints. The device is also compact and portable, powered only by two AA batteries. Unlike the time-intensive process of making silkscreen masters with photosensitive emulsions, UV lamps, and so on, Print Gocco master production is fast, mess-free, and can be made from a simple black-and-white photocopy on plain paper.

These are two prints from my first use of the Print Gocco, featuring a lovely illustration made for me by Gabrielle Genevieve. All colors were imprinted in a single pass, made possible by the fact that the inks have a firm consistency and are resistant to blending when pressed.

In retrospect, coloring the telephone yellow wasn't a good choice.

This image was a challenge for the Print Gocco: there is considerable smudging (top) and veining (top right, bottom left) due to some overinking and the print density of the image.

From my perspective, the Print Gocco system hits an excellent sweet spot between playful and professional. However, it does have some drawbacks:

It requires the use of hard-to-find proprietary consumables—Print Gocco masters, inks, and flashbulbs, etc.—all of which have not been produced for decades.
Print Gocco masters and flashbulbs are single use. (The flashbulbs literally explode when fired.)
The flashbulb burst and inks smell absolutely awful. The inks' ingredients are not listed, but I suspect they are made of pigment suspended in a soybean oil carrier that, after a few decades, has now gone rancid.
While delicate designs with text or medium-fine lines look OK, the quality can be variable, especially with more densely-colored images that cause ink to pool, creating visible veins when the master is pressed or smudges when released.

So, could we improve on the Print Gocco?

Scene from a Print Gocco instructional VHS tape

Print Gocco's more professional friend: the Risograph

The company that produced the Print Gocco, Riso Kagaku, is still in operation. Today, they're best known for their line of Risograph machines: sophisticated, digitized Print Goccos that work and look more like commercial copy machines and produce high-resolution poster-size prints. In recent years, Risograph printing has seen a surge of interest among a cohort of illustrators, designers, and zinesters who laud its economical per-print price and distinctive look. Like tube amplifiers, Risograph printing is often described by its fans in terms of its imperfections, constraints, and "analog" or "warm" qualities.

For further reading: Javier Syquia authored an excellent postcolonial analysis of the Eurocentric othering of so-called "vernacular design," including the use of Risograph printing in the Philippines.

While I do question some of the aesthetic romanticization of the Risograph, I am admittedly drawn to the look of Risograph prints, too. The bright, lightly-speckled ink on newsprint-like paper reminded me of... something. The Barbie comic books I read as a child, maybe?

I took a Risograph workshop offered at a local university a few years ago and appreciated how quick and easy the process was compared to letterpress and screenprinting. I came home inspired, wondering how I could do more Risograph printing. Turns out: I couldn't. Not easily, at least.

Risograph machines aren't as ubiquitous as copy machines or digital press services. Where I live, there are only a handful of Risograph machines owned by universities and artist collectives, none of which offer Risograph printing to the public. I briefly had the idea to get together enough money to purchase a Risograph machine that could be made available in a local artspace as a community resource, but after I reached out to a licensed Riso dealer, the company literally sent two men in suits to my home to size me up and determine whether I was a "legitimate buyer."

I suspect a good deal of revenue comes from recurring service contracts.

Upon realizing I was not a commercial operation, they recommended some inkjet printers instead, declined to tell me how much a Risograph machine might cost, and finally stopped responding to my emails altogether.

In any case, the Risograph is too far from my current search for a simpler, toy-like printing experience. It's large, expensive, and requires lots of specialty equipment and maintenance. So on we go.

Retrofitting the Print Gocco

I began to wonder if the Print Gocco device could be retrofitted with other, more ordinary or readily-replenishable materials—modern inks, a reusable light source—that could offer improved sustainability and print quality.

My first thought was to replace the flashbulbs with a more consistent and tuneable light source: Arduino-controlled LED strips. Some research led me to find that someone had already done such a thing some years ago, using a photoreactive sheet called StencilPro in place of the Print Gocco master. StencilPro has since been discontinued, but the LED idea was interesting, and in the interest of changing a single variable at a time, I was curious to try it with an original Print Gocco master.

How Print Gocco masters work

However, once I started researching the technical details behind the Print Gocco's functionality, I learned that the flashbulbs weren't originally used as a source of light in the device but as a source of heat.

The Print Gocco master is comprised of a thin paper sandwiched into a cardboard frame. One side of the paper is coated with a thermoplastic layer that is selectively melted away when the flashbulbs fire: Heat radiates from the carbon in the original image's photocopy toner and melts away the image portion.

A Print Gocco master after being developed

I also learned that Risograph machines work on the same principle. Instead of using carboard frames that are pressed onto paper one at a time, the master material is wound on to a large roll inside the machine. A digital image is "printed" on the master material by a thermal head. An ink drum inks the uncoated side of the master, and paper is fed through rapidly, picking up the inked image as it rolls by.

The burst of ~~light~~ heat created by flashbulbs inside the Print Gocco develops the master stencil.

Wait, so a Risograph is just a big receipt printer?

Most modern shipping label and receipt printers are thermal printers: they create an image on thermal paper rolls or stickers by selectively heating the top layer of white, revealing the black "ink" underneath. It was a big hunch, but I figured I might be able to feed a small piece of Risograph master paper into a thermal printer to develop it. In this way, I could theoretically create DIY Print Gocco masters at a higher resolution and without a need for flashbulbs. For about $100, I acquired a 300-DPI shipping label printer and a giant roll of Risograph master. I fully accepted the possibility that this whole thing was going to break, melt, or catch fire, but I had to know.

I cut and adhered a square of Risograph master to a blank shipping label and cautiously fed it into the machine, which connects to a computer via USB to get image data. Using the same illustration from before, I clicked "Print" and held my breath. The label emerged in less than a second. And much to my surprise, the illustration was perfectly burned on to the Risograph master with unbelieveable detail. It worked! Holy shit, it worked.

Risograph material developed by a shipping label printer.

Next steps

Stay tuned for a follow-up post describing my experiments using these stencils to create art prints at home. (Update: Read part 2 here!)

Hundreds of test prints and iterations later...

Mimeoprinting (Printmaking as play, part 2)

2022-05-18T00:00:00Z

In my last blog post, I shared my adventures in reverse-engineering the Print Gocco, a DIY printmaking device from the 1970s. While Print Goccos have been out of production for nearly 20 years, I found that I could use an inexpensive shipping-label printer, themoplastic stencil paper, and a few simple craft materials to create a DIY version of the device. Here are my learnings and recommendations on how you can try out this printmaking method for yourself.

A side-by-side technique comparison featuring Gabrielle's illustration as seen in my last blog post.

The goal

I admire the craft that goes into printmaking techniques like screenprinting and intaglio, but sometimes, I just want to make a few prints for fun, and I'm perfectly happy to make trade-offs in quality or scale. In making something Print Gocco-like at home, my goal was a setup that:

meets or exceeds the print quality of the Print Gocco
is easy and suitable for a beginner
is small enough to use seated at a desk and to store easily when not in use
can be done quickly, including preparation and cleanup
has limited dependencies on specialty materials and can instead make good use of reclaimed or everyday items
minimizes waste and the use of harmful materials

Prior art

Before we dive into the how-to, a quick note on prior art: I do want to stress that my joy in "discovering" these techniques is not meant to lay claim on any novel invention. Indeed, after five or six weeks of iterating on my design, my jaw dropped when I came across the YouTube channel of Stampalofi demonstrating nearly the same technique using a repurposed fax machine in place of a label printer. I have since found similar work by Mimeograph Revival, Tomoko Kanzaki, and Rich Dana, too.

I might have found their work earlier had I thought to include the keyword "mimeograph" in my internet research. Oops. I vaguely knew about the hand-cranked mimeographs and Ditto machines used by teachers to make worksheet copies many decades ago, but I hadn't considered how they worked. It turns out that mimeographs, like Risographs, use a thin stencil paper inked by an ink drum. In the case of a mimeograph, master images were imprinted through pressure from a stylus or typewriter hammer.

So I did unwittingly reinvent a wheel, it seems, but it was fun to do so. After seeing that I wasn't alone in these adventures, I came away inspired to add my voice to the small but mighty choir of stencil-printing enthusiasts. And the newfound connection to mimeography inspired a name for my previously nameless method: mimeoprinting.

Still from an archival film on mimeograph operation

How to mimeoprint

The basic steps I follow are:

Prepare a monochrome image
Cut thermoplastic stencil paper to size
Use a thermal printer to print the reverse of the image on to the shiny side of stencil
Place the stencil, shiny side down, on a sheet of paper
Apply ink through stencil to the paper beneath
Cleanly remove the stencil
Repeat as needed

There are, of course, many ways to accomplish these steps, but I'll share specifics of the methods I used (as well as a few I abandoned). Please note that the following activities will void warranties; proceed with caution and adult supervision, etc.

Preparing stencil paper and printer

Risograph and Risograph-compatible stencil is sold by the roll. There are some differences in roll size and resolution for different machine models. I haven't done any exhaustive testing; the roll I use is labeled for use in RA500LA machines.

Risograph stencil can be cut to size easily with scissors or a blade cutter. Be careful that the thermoplastic layer doesn't separate from the tissue backing while cutting.

The label printer I use to burn my images is a Logia 300 DPI printer for 4" x 6" labels. I chose this model for its price, small size, print resolution, reusability as a label printer, and its lack of dependence on an accompanying mobile app for printing. (Third-party apps are prone to rapid obsolescence.) I recommend buying used or repurposing old tech—as Stampalofi has done with the fax machine—instead of buying something new where possible. Another benefit of using a fax machine is its larger print area.

Before loading the label printer, I lightly adhere the cut stencil to a blank label using the absolute smallest amount of adhesive along the leading edge of the stencil. This makes the stencil thick enough to feed through the machine correctly. Additionally, my label printer uses a small camera to align labels as they're fed into the machine, so it needs to "see" the top-most edge of the sticker in order to print.

It's important to keep the stencil flat and free of frayed areas or exposed adhesive. Any glue that seeps out can risk getting into the printer internals, which will damage both your print and the machine. I use Fineline Red-Top Glue, which is a regular white glue that comes with a syringe-like applicator. In my experience, tape and rubber cement do not work well and can get caught in the printer.

Stencil-topped label being loaded into the Logia label printer

Since the stencil can be easily torn, it's important to clean the printer head and rollers before and after each print. I keep the printer's settings at the maximum darkness level and with a reduced speed which is, to be fair, still around one second per print. Examine the stencil after printing to make sure there aren't tears. Blank labels can be reused if care is taken when removing the stencils after printing.

All thermal printers will have their own quirks and caveats, so consider these general guidelines.

Cutting stencil paper to size

Keeping the stencil taut

The stamping motion of the Print Gocco works in part because the stencil paper is rigid and is tightly adhered to its cardboard frame. Without this rigidity, ink will pool and prints will smudge. (This explains why color-dense areas are more challenging for the Print Gocco: they represent areas in which the stencil is weaker.)

If you plan to repurpose the Print Gocco, you may find it challenging to adhere your custom stencil to a frame tightly enough. After experimenting with a number of approaches, including making my own Print Gocco frames from cardboard, freezer bags, and laser-cut acrylic, I concluded that using the Print Gocco was more trouble than it was worth.

Instead, I cut a 3.8" x 5.8" rectangle from a sheet of rigid, clear polypropylene to create a frame. I taped the top edge of the frame to a piece of chipboard from the back of a paper pad to create a hinge. Finally, I taped the stencil into the hole of the frame from its underside, shiny side down. This creates something not unlike a screenprinting setup.

Putting the cutout to one side makes it easy to rest the frame against something when taking a break

When using a frame like this, ink is brushed or rolled on the back of the stencil, one print at a time. The benefits of this are over a press method are:

Less ink waste
Ability to see if all portions of the image have been inked and, if not, to reink them
More consistent application of ink

The clear polypropylene sheet was purchased at a local Daiso for about a dollar. It can be cleaned and reused over and over, it does not require the use of ink-blocking tape as cardboard would, and it is easily cut with a blade. Furthermore, by virtue of being clear, it can make registration and stencil alignment easier. (Another thing you might find helpful is drawing gridlines every 1/2" on the chipboard to help with alignment.) Finally, the polypropylene sheet is rigid but has just enough give to allow you to bend the frame backwards slightly as you separate it from the paper. I find this really helpful in preventing smudges during lifting.

The trickiest part of preparing the frame is taping on the stencil. I strongly recommend using wide, low-tack drafting tape sold in art supply stores. This is a paper tape that you can reposition in case there are wrinkles in the stencil. I tend to tape down one side, then gently tug the stencil as I tape the opposite side, and reposition here and there as needed. The goal is to have a taut, wrinkle-free stencil perfectly aligned inside the frame's cutout. Remember to tape the stencil to the underside of the frame; otherwise, the edges of the image may be cut off.

I tried numerous ink application techniques and found the best results using brushes with short, synthetic, dense, and equally-long bristles. A decoupage brush I had in my studio (pictured below) worked perfectly. Inexpensive foam rollers can be used, too. When the right amount of pressure is applied (and assuming you have not overinked your stencil), you will see the image appear as you brush or roll. This happens as ink is pushed through the stencil and repelled from the non-printing areas.

As the stencil is brushed, my NES pixel art begins to appear in the stencil backing!

Note that applying too much brush or roller pressure can tear the stencil. Once torn, it can no longer be used.

A stencil taped to a hand-cut clear plastic frame

Choosing and preparing inks

The most time spent during my experiments, by far, was with inks or paints (I'm using these terms interchangeably). I wanted inks that met the following criteria:

Lightfast
Consistent in pigmentation
Resistant to spreading on paper
Free of VOCs and toxic pigments such as cadmium
Blendable for adding transparency or making custom colors
Slow-drying (to keep the stencil workable and crisp)
Reasonably affordable
Easy clean-up

I experimented with oil- and water-based paints, including screenprinting ink, block printing ink, gouache, watercolor, intaglio ink, acrylic paint, oil paint, alcohol ink, and calligraphy ink. Straight out of the tube, the best results were with water-based screenprinting ink and Golden Open Acrylic, a slow-drying acrylic paint designed to have a long open time like oil paint. However, both inks have a tendency to get a little goopy.

During my tests, the main contributors to poor print quality were bleeding, smudging, fading, wrinkling, and master degradation, caused by the following ink qualities:

Bleeding: Ink is too thin
Smudging: Ink is too thick or too slow-drying (e.g., oil paint)
Fading: Ink is too fast-drying, causing it to dry into the master (e.g., gouache, acrylic paint)
Wrinkling: Ink is too wet, causing the master to sag and pool with ink
Degradation: Ink is too dry, causing friction against the master and spotty printing

Eventually, I found the silver-bullet ingredient that helped with all these issues: nori, or rice-flour paste. I learned about this from Stampalofi, and adding it to my inks dramatically improved my results. (This also extended the inks significantly, making printing more economical, too!)

The video that tipped me off to nori as an ink additive—thanks, Stampalofi!

Upon further research, I learned that nori has been used for hundreds of years in paper-stencil crafts such as katazome fabric printing as an adhesive, ink additive, and resist paste due to its ability to create a stiff film without wrinkling or soaking delicate paper.

Did you ever make "ooblek," a mixture of water and cornstarch, in chemistry class? Ooblek is a non-Newtonian fluid that stiffens under nominal pressure, making it fun to squish in your hands. Screenprinting inks have an ooblek-like additive to improve their performance when pressed by squeegee. Nori lends this same benefit, imparting an ineffible "more wet yet more dry" quality that other paints lack.

To make nori, add 10 grams of rice flour to 2 ounces of water and stir. Add that to another 2 oz. of water simmering on the stovetop. Stir constantly with a silicone spatula until it's thickened a bit. Scraping the spatula along the bottom of the pot should cause the mixture to fill back in just a bit more slowly than a liquid would. Pour the nori into a bowl, leave it to cool, and use within 24 hours. Once cool, it should have a pudding-like consistency. This will need to be thinned later, but it's better to start with a thicker paste and thin it in small portions as you use it.

Pre-made nori can be purchased at art supply shops, and while it has the benefit of added preservatives, I got better results with the homemade variety, which is of course more affordable as well.

Getting the right proportion of nori, ink, and water is a little bit of a dark art, but I'll do my best to describe my approach: For a brush-on technique, the ideal paint consistency is that of a brush-on marinade or thin sauce. It's thinner than ketchup and liquid enough to glide with a silky feel when spread by a paintbrush. When collected on a paintbrush, the ink should not drip from the bristles but should just barely hang on.

The blue and pink inks in the top two wells are too thick. They have been mixed and thinned with water in the bottom two wells. Less ketchup, more teriyaki sauce.

My best results have been acheived by mixing thinned nori with either Golden Open Acrylic, calligraphy ink, or a mix of the two. Calligraphy ink is more economical since little is needed, and it is offered in fully non-toxic organic-pigment ranges such as Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay Ink. Student-grade bottled sumi ink is both affordable and an excellent additive for darkening colors. Golden Open Acrylic is more of a specialty paint, and care should be taken to choose colors that don't include heavy-metal pigments. However, it offers rich color and has a long working time, meaning there's little risk of ink drying in the stencil. Retarder additives used in screenprinting may be useful for this application, but I have not tried those yet.

In this mimeoprint, a first pass was done with a mix of thinned nori paste and a few drops of green calligraphy ink, resulting in a light mint-green print. In the second pass, using a different stencil, shadows were overprinted by adding a few drops of sumi ink to the remainder of the previously-used ink mixture.

Paper selection

In my experience, the best papers for printing are smooth-textured and resistant to warping when wet. I found that something toothy like a watercolor paper won't pick up as much detail, while cheaper mixed media papers can warp. I've had good results with newsprint and marker paper like the one made by Copic. OGAMI paper, made from reclaimed quarry waste, gives a unique smooth and matte finish that is both hard to describe (and hard to photograph, unfortunately). But the results are quite unique.

That's it for now!

Despite the lengthy detail posted here, the process really is quite quick, simple, and economical. I can typically go from idea to a set of prints to clean-up in 1 to 2 hours, and that's at a leisurely pace. When printing is complete, the stencil can be easily pulled off its frame and discarded. It's been quite fun, and I definitely plan on making more mimeoprints in the future.

Thank you for reading through to the end, and I hope this has been helpful or educational to other printmaking enthusiasts. Happy mimeoprinting!

Hooray!

PFFT: An evastars retrospective

2023-03-02T00:00:00Z

I'm excited to share that this month, I'm the artist in residence at Welcome to My Homepage. My web-based piece is called PFFT: An evastars retrospective.

Best viewed at 800 x 600

The work is both personal and eclectic, bringing together just about every element of my artistic practice as well as some new (to me) territory. I can't say too much more now, but I'm looking forward to sharing it over the next few weeks.

You can find PFFT and other Welcome to My Homepage works at welcometomyhomepage.net.

Update: PFFT: An evastars retrospective is no longer accessible through welcometomyhomepage.net but is permanently available via this link.

A Casio Loopy Eurorack module

2023-05-26T00:00:00Z

What do you get when your video game collecting habit collides with your audio electronics habit? Why, custom Eurorack module firmware based on the sounds of the Casio Loopy video game console, of course! When reflashed, this module employs a drum kit made of sounds nestled within the Loopy console's BIOS. And it sounds beautiful!

Read on to learn how I wrote custom firmware for this and other video-game inspired samplers. (And if you have a BAD IDEA #1800-CALL-YER-MUM module at home, you can grab this firmware on GitHub for your own use.)

Why?

My pandemic hobby was building my first modular synth. It's a diminutive (by Eurorack standards) 92HP/3U rack. I designed the synth to aid my work in preserving the history of girls' electronic toys and video games, so I chose modules that would help me bring musicality and rhythmic variety to all manner of relevant external audio sources: anything from Hello Kitty video games to circuit-bent Barbie laptops.

The sampler: #1800-CALL-YER-MUM

I've been making a conscious effort to talk about music-making in ways that don't center gear or what to buy. However, I'm breaking that rule to speak to a particular module in my setup: an audio sampler. It's a critical part of my synth, as it allows me to reuse and rearrange slivers of sounds I've captured from games and toys. The sampler I use is the BAD IDEA #1800-CALL-YER-MUM by Moffenzeef Modular.

The #1800 has been out of production for some time, so I consider myself lucky to have found one when I started building out my synth. The module is powered by a Teensy microcontroller with firmware containing 12 audio samples. The module's interface is wonderfully clever: the panel offers 12 input jacks for patching in triggers, one for each of the 12 sounds. Instead of having a corresponding set of 12 outputs, the module outputs a single, mixed-down audio signal.

The #1800 ships with firmware that mimics touchtone dialing, which feels right at home with the telephone-style layout of the panel. But the module can be reflashed with one of many alternate firmwares Moffenzeef provides on their GitHub repo. These alternate firmwares are based on a variety of classic and modern drum machines, which some might find more useful than touchtone sounds.

On its own, a reflashable 12-piece drum kit in a 10 HP package is a terribly useful module. However, given my interest in using the sounds of girls' games and toys, I was keen to get my own samples loaded on the module.

Building custom firmware for the #1800

Building a Casio Loopy drum kit

I knew the first firmware I wanted to create was for a drum kit based on the Casio Loopy. This Japan-only, 32-bit video game console was marketed to girls and featured a built-in color sticker printer that allowed players to make customized stickers to trade with friends. Coincidentally, another pandemic hobby of mine had been exploring Casio Loopy emulation with engineer pal Phil Bennett. In 2021, he successfully dumped the device's BIOS and retrieved the audio samples used by game cartridges to create music and sound effects. I used his work to separate out the components of the drum kit, which could then be used in a sampler.

Voiding my warranty

Moffenzeef provides no mechanism for users to load in their own samples to the #1800. Nevertheless, I decided that creating some warranty-voiding custom firmware was in order.

The instructions for reflashing the #1800 describe how to use the Teensy Loader Application to load the provided firmware (compiled .hex files). The #1800 repo also includes source files for each of these firmwares. Each folder of source files contains contains one .ino file as well as a .cpp and .h file corresponding to each sample. So, I figured I could make my own firmware by:

Determining how to convert my 12 audio samples from .wav to the matching .cpp/.h format,
Editing an .ino file to use these custom samples, and
Compiling the .ino to a .hex file so that the firmware can be easily reflashed by drag-and-drop with the Teensy Loader Application.

Fortunately, the provided .cpp source code gave me an idea of how to achieve the first step. The comments note that the audio sample was converted with something called wav2sketch using 44100 Hz u-law encoding. I was able to track down the wav2sketch tool tucked away in Paul Stoffregen's Teensy Audio library. The C or Javascript version can be used for the conversion, though I prefer the Javascript port. (I did have to comment out the line that reads out += 'PROGMEM\n'; because such syntax is not supported in my older version of the Arduino IDE.) Converting my Casio Loopy .wav files with wav2sketch spit out .cpp and .h files in just the format I was expecting.

From there, the remaining steps were pretty easy: get the proper libraries installed, replicate an .ino that points to my custom samples, and have the Arduino IDE output a .hex binary. My Loopy drum kit worked on the first try. Hooray!

Gyroid sounds and other drum kits

Once I had this process nailed down, it was hard for me to stop dreaming up new firmware! One features nothing but vocal samples from girly cartoons like Moondreamers and Jem and the Holograms. Another is a drum kit made entirely of Gyroid sounds from Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

To capture the Gyroid sounds, I placed all the percussive Gyroids in an otherwise quiet room of my in-game house and turned each one on, one at a time, while recording my gameplay footage.

All the percussive Gyroids were collected and placed in a quiet room before recording.

I even pulled sounds from my own NES homebrew catalog to make BADIDEA-PARTYTIME-NES, a #1800 firmware made of 8-bit sounds sampled from the noise and DPCM channels of TRACK+FEEL II (2012), Electronic Sweet-N-Fun Fortune Teller (2013), and Computers Are Easy, Love Is Kind (2015).

Title screen from TRACK+FEEL II

Custom overlays

For fun, I also created a few custom panel overlays for the Loopy, Gyroid, and NES firmwares.

At first, I considered making proper replacement panels for each firmware. However, changing out the panel on the #1800 is a bit of work given the 13 panel-mount jacks. So, I took a page from the Vectrex playbook and created thin overlays that could be easily swapped in and out. Each overlay is held in by the four corner screws, so disassembling the panel can be skipped entirely.

Moffenzeef provides vector files for the #1800's panel, which I was able to modify for use with my Cricut plotter and cutting machine to accurately draw on and cut cardstock. Then, I handpainted the cardstock with India ink. While not at all necessary, the overlays are a fun way to convey which firmware is loaded on the #1800.

Loopy module with overlay

Do it yourself

The Loopy, Gyroid, and NES firmware binaries for the #1800 are available on GitHub. However, I realize that they're very reliant on a particular piece of hardware. In the future, I'd like to provide these kits in other, more flexible formats as well. In the meantime, I hope you're inspired to consider how to preserve endangered sounds through reverse engineering and tool making.

Currently

2023-06-12T00:00:00Z

I'm excited to share that this month, I'm the artist in residence at Welcome to My Homepage. My web-based piece is called PFFT: An evastars retrospective.

Best viewed at 800 x 600

You can find PFFT and other Welcome to My Homepage works at welcometomyhomepage.net.

Update: PFFT: An evastars retrospective is no longer accessible through welcometomyhomepage.net but is permanently available via this link.

SIGGRAPH 1979 Film and Videotape Retrospective

2025-10-25T00:00:00Z

Below are excerpts of things I found interesting and/or that I want to look up later while reading the 25-page PDF scan of the program listing for the SIGGRAPH ’79 Film and Videotape Retrospective.

Verbatim quotes from the program listing are in the main body of this page, while my personal annotations appear in the margins.

LAPIS 1966

10 minutes; 16mm movie film
By: James Whitney at the filmmaker’s L. A. Studio
Equipment: Mechanical analog machine (prototype)

On YouTube.

TERMINAL SELF 1971

8 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: John Whitney, Jr. at the filmmaker’s L. A. Studio
Equipment: Mechanical analog machine (prototype)

YIN HSIEN 1976

9 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Michael Whitney at the filmmaker’s L. A. Studio
Equipment: Motion-controlled optical printer (prototype)

BINARY BIT PATTERNS 1968

3 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Michael Whitney and John Whitney, Sr. at Information International
Equipment: FR80 Microfilm Plotter

PERMUTATIONS 1968

7 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: John Whitney, Sr. at UCLA Health Sciences
Equipment: IBM 2250

On YouTube.

FIRST FIG 1974

6 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Larry Cube and Gary Imhoff at Cal Arts
Equipment: Univac 1108, SC 4020 Microfilm Plotter

GENESYS c. 1969

25 minutes (short excerpt); 16 mm movie film
By: Ronald Baecker, Eric Martin and Lynn Smith at MIT Lincoln Labs
Equipment: TX-2
Illustrates the use of the Genesys computer animation system.

COMPUTER COLOR GENERATIONS 1972

23 minutes; 16 mm movie film with sound
By: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
Equipment: FR80 Microfilm Recorder
A documentary about a technique developed at Los Alamos by which computers can produce color film output at the same cost as black-and-white output. Using computer movie runs as examples, the advantages of color over black and white are discussed.

RON HAYS MUSIC-IMAGE PRESENTATION 1974-1975

50 min; 3/4-inch videotape; sound
By: Ron Hays at WGBH, Boston; Hollywood, CA; and New York City
Equipment: CMX computer editor; PAIK-ABE video synthesizer; Scanimate computer; various video switchers and special effects generators plus computer-controlled animation techniques.
Presentation includes overview of Ron Hays’ work in visual music and multi-media concert situations. Selections include works as seen on public television, feature-length films (Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Demon Seed) plus television coverage of Star Wars concerts at Montreal Olympic Stadium, 62,000 people in attendance, using lasers and computer imagery. Presentation also includes examples of Emmy award-winning computer graphic title sequences.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE 1968

14 minutes; 3/4-inch videotape
By: Animation and Computer Graphics Staff at the New York Institute of Technology
Equipment: PDP 11s, Evans and Sutherland frame buffers, Three River Graphic Display Processors.
An animated film that pokes fun at our way of measuring. Two kinds of computer animation and conventional animation were intercut.

NYIT SAMPLERS 1976

10 minutes; 35 mm movie film and 3/4-inch videotape
By: The New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Laboratory
A collection of animated pieces made at NYIT including 2-d and 3-d animation, special effects, and commercials.

HALLEY FLYBY / TEMPEL 2 RENDEZVOUS 1978

12 minutes; 16 mm movie film; silent
By: Linda M. Lee, James F. Blinn, and Julian E. Gomez at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Equipment: Evans and Sutherland Picture System 2, PDP 11/55, Univac 1108, Calcomp Microfilm
A study of a proposed mission to encounter Halley’s Comet and Comet Tempel 2.

The proposed Halley/Tempel 2 mission did not occur, and the spacecraft instead became Mariner 5 as part of a NASA mission to study the atmosphere of Venus.

PIXILLATION 1970

4 minutes; 16 mm movie film; sound
By: Ken Knowlton and Lillian Schwartz at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
Equipment: SC 4020 Microfilm Plotter, optically added color
Abstract art film.

ABSTRACTIONS ON A BEDSHEET 1972

7 minutes; 3/4-inch videotape; sound
By: Bill Etra in Miami, Florida and New York City
Equipment: PDP 11, oscillators
An abstract art work with computer-controlled audio and computer-controlled programmed distortion of a video raster.

OLYMPIAD 1971

3-1/2 minutes; 16 mm movie film; sound
By: Ken Knowlton and Lillian Schwartz at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
Equipment: SC 4020 Microfilm Plotter, optically added color; BEFLIX and EXPLOR software systems.
Abstract art film based on programmed manipulation of running man image.

MS MUFFET 1975

3 minutes; 3/4-inch videotape; sound
By: Lou Katz, Bill Etra, and Louise Etra at Columbia University and Etras’ studio
Equipment: PDP 11/45; Tektronix Scan Converter at 4010 terminal; Rutt-Etra Video Synthesizer; Electronic Associates of Berkeley Video Lab; Synthi Audio Synthesizer.
A real-time interactive art piece, with computer-controlled graphics, colorization, sound and keying effects. The performer interacted with the images as the piece was recorded.

PATCHWORK '71 Prior to 1971

30 minutes; 16 mm movie film; sound
Collected and Edited By: Professor Kent Wilson, Department of Chemistry, University of California, San Diego
Equipment: Many systems. Some sound and optical color added by Dr. Wilson.
A sampler of excerpts from instructional and demo films produced by many of the graphics groups active in the early ’70’s in several universities and laboratories.

THE PRISM SHOWREEL 1976-1979

4 minutes; 3/4-inch videotape
By: Peter Chandler, Tony Diment, and Hayden Young at Imperial College, London; EMI Central Research Labs, Hayes; and EMI A/V.
Equipment: PDP 11/40
Selected title sequences and commercials.

THE ANTICS SHOWREEL 1975-1978

5 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Alan Kitching and Colin Emmett at ATLAS Labs
Equipment: FR80
Demonstration of the ANTICS software.

FINITE ELEMENTS 1977

10 minutes; 16 mm movie film By: Alan Kitching and Colin Emmett at Atlas Lab
Equipment: SD 4020/ANTICS
Royal College of Art. A full length animation.

This educational film is available on YouTube.

THAMES TV TITLE SEQUENCE 1979

1 minute; 16 mm movie film
By: T. Pritchett at ATLAS Lab
Equipment: FR80/35 mm

THE ALIEN 1979

2 minutes
By: J. Landsdowne, System Simulation at the CAD Centre, ATLAS Lab
Equipment: FR80/35 mm
For 20th Century Fox.

It took me a second to realize that they're talking about the movie Alien. I'm not sure if it had been released before the 1979 SIGGRAPH. I read that this is a computer-generated wireframe scene, but I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not sure exactly where or what it is. I guess I'll move Alien up on my to-watch list.

WIRE TREES WITH 4 VECTORS 1978

4 minutes; 3/4 inch video; stereo sound
Audio by: Lief Brush, Stu Pettigrew
Video by: Phil Morton, Guenther Tetz
Black and white performance computer graphics with audio synthesis.
Equipment: UICC GRASS System, Chicago, Sandin Image Processor, Arp Audio Synthesizer

Ah, the mysterious (Z)GRASS...

PROGRAM #9: AMATEUR TV 1979

29 minutes, 3/4 inch video; stereo sound
By: Phil Morton, Jane Veeder
Using digital home computer, analog signal processing, and light-weight video equipment to produce a subjective research report on amateur television (2,000-plus U.S. Ham TVers transmitting/receiving personal television from their home bases).
Equipment: Bally Arcade (Home Computer), Sandin Image Processor

It's like they packed all my favorite things—Jane Veeder, Bally Astrocade, Sandin Image Processor, and amateur television!—all in one 30-minute video. And happily, it's on YouTube. You can find Morton and Veeder's Program #7 on YouTube, too.

REFERENCE CARRIER 1978

2 minutes; 3/4 inch video; silent
By: Phil Morton
A dynamic black and white analog computer reference signal to be filled in and colored by the user.
Equipment: Sandin Image Processor

LOOP CYCLE 1978

2 minutes; 3/4 inch video; stereo sound
Audio by: Phil Morton, Jane Veeder
Video by: Jane Veeder
Nested electronic multiplication and streaming.
Equipment: Sandin Image Processor

CETACEAN 1978

3 minutes; 3/4 inch video; stereo sound
Audio by: Chip Dodsworth, Barry Bosch
Video by: Chip Dodsworth, Phil Morton
Geographic field collection at Santa Cruz, California and electronic field reprocessing at Chicago, Illinois OCEAN
Equipment: Portable Video Teck, Sandin Image Processor

Keying video of the tide coming in is surprisingly effective. Video on YouTube.

ICRON 1978

11 minutes; 3/4 inch video; stereo sound
By: Bob Snyder
Multiple visual and audio instrument (simultaneous) configuration running on master analog program.
Equipment: EMU Audio Synthesizer, Sandin Image Processor

DATA BURSTS: THIRD MOVE 1978

3 minutes; 3/4 inch video; stereo sound
Audio by: Phil Morton, Bob Snyder
Video by: Phil Morton, Buenther Tetz
Color performance computer graphics with audio synthesis.
Equipment: UICC GRASS System, Sandin Image Processor, EMU Audio Synthesizer

THREE VIEWS OF WATER 1975

6 minutes (excerpt); 3/4" videotape color
By: Dan Sandin
Analog Image Processing of Naturally Collected Material
Equipment: Sandin Analog Image Processor

VAPOR TRAILS 1979

5 minutes (excerpt); 3/4" videotape color
By: Stuart Pettigrew
Direct Video Synthesis
Equipment: Analog Image Processor

NCC/GRASS POOP TAPE 1976

15 minutes; 3/4" videotape color
By: Dan Sandin, Tom DeFanti, Phil Morton
Circle Graphics Habitat GRASS System/Image Processor Demonstration
Equipment: Vector General and Image Processor

So they're not going to address why it's called "GRASS poop tape," huh?

FIRST TAPE FROM THE DIGITAL IMAGE COLORIZER 1979

10 minutes; 3/4" videotape color
By: Dan Sandin
The First Card of the Digital Image Processor in its First Public Showing
Equipment: Sandin Digital Image Colorizer

CHEMISTRY TAPES (EXCERPTS) 1973-77

5 minutes; 3/4" videotape color
By: Circle Graphics Inhabitants
Sample Tape of Rotating Molecules, etc.
Equipment: Vector General and Sandin Image Processor

SPIRAL 3 1978

10 minutes; 3/4" videotape color
By: Tom DeFanti, Phil Morton, Dan Sandin, Bob Snyder, Jane Veeder and Rylin Harris (dance)
Performance Piece with Digital and Analog Computer Graphics and Dance
Equipment: Vector General and Sandin Image Processor

L6 - PART I 1966

1966 15 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Ken Knowlton at Bell Labs
Equipment: Stromberg DatagraphiX 4060 Microfilm Recorder
Introduction to List Processing Language L6.

POEMFIELD #2 1967

8 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Ken Knowlton and Stan Van Der Beek at Bell Labs
Equipment: Stromberg DatagraphiX 4060 Microfilm Recorder
Computer art film. Concrete poetry.

A classic.

UFO'S 1979

3 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Ken Knowlton and Lillian Schwartz at Bell Labs
Equipment: Stromberg DatagraphiX 4060 Microfilm Recorder
Computer art.

METAMORPHOSIS 1973

10 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Ken Knowlton and Lillian Schwartz at Bell Labs
Equipment: Home-built frame buffer and color television
Computer art.

I need to know more about this "home-built frame buffer."

CRYSTAL GROWTH 1978

1978 10 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Ken Knowlton, George Gilmer, and Mary Shugard at Bell Labs
Equipment: Home-built frame buffer and color television
Simulation of crystal growth.

BAOBAB 1979

1979 20 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Ken Knowlton and Emmanuel Ghent
Equipment: Home-built frame buffer and color television
Computer art.

WIPEPOEM 1976

6 minutes; 3/4-inch videotape
By: Patsy Scala at Syracuse University
Equipment: DEC 10, Grass Valley television switcher, refracted laser light
Abstract attempts to sensualize computer imagery through use of color, movement, and the interplay of negative and positive space.

I only recently learned about Patsy Scala's work, which is a real shame. I'm not sure if I've seen Wipepoem or just read about it, but I remember being really impressed. I need to look up more about her and her work.

SCOPE II 1976

5 minutes; 3/4-inch videotape
By: Patsy Scala at Syracuse University
Equipment: DEC 10,Grass Valley television switcher, refracted laser light
Abstract attempts to sensualize computer imagery through use of color, movement, and the interplay of negative and positive space.

SYRACUSE CABLE SYSTEMS-COMPUTER VIDEO MUSIC CHANNEL 1979

30 minutes; 3/4-inch videotape
By: Programming Department Staff at Syracuse Cable Systems
Equipment: Apple II
Part of a 24 hour-a-day computer graphics cable channel, possibly the first of its kind in this country.

Sounds like a good idea. Definitely need to look this one up.

AND-HANDS 1962

2 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Stan Van Der Beek at Computation Center, University of Texas, Austin
Equipment: CDC 6600, light pen and keyboard
Drawings of geometric shapes (hands and heads). Use of type and limited animation.

Huh, had no idea that Van Der Beek did work at my alma mater.

MAN AND HIS WORLD 1968

1 minute; 16 mm movie film
By: Stan Van Der Beek and Ken Knowlton
Equipment: Stromberg Carlson 4020; BEFLIX software system
Exploration of graphics and patterns color experiments from black and white originals.

WHO-HOO-RAYS 1967-1970

7 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Stan Van Der Beek at home
Equipment: Home-made modifications to standard oscilloscope.
Radio programs are modified into abstract images, filmed in black and white, and color printed by "Brown/Olvey".

POEMFIELD #7 1969

5 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Stan Van Der Beek and Ken Knowlton at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
Equipment: Stromberg Carlson 4020
One of a series of computer poems that explore the graphic possibilities of typography and patterns. Made from black and white film printed in color by "Brown/Olvey".

Poemfield #7 on YouTube.

COLLIDEOSCOPE 1966

4 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Stan Van Der Beek, Ken Knowlton, and Carol Bosche at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
Equipment: Stromberg Carlson 4020
Experiments with text and typography. A short poem is transformed into a series of patterns and optical illusions.

SYMMETRIKS 1972

7 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Stan Van Der Beek and Wade Shaw
Equipment: Light pen
Drawings that are multi-copied by the computer. An experiment to make color from a black and white film.

EUCLIDEAN ILLUSIONS 1979

11 minutes; 16 mm movie film
By: Stan Van Der Beek and Richard Weinberg at NASA, Houston, Texas
Geometric shapes penetrate each other and move through space. An unexpected moment in geometric order.

The internet is (not) forever

2025-10-30T00:00:00Z

Last week's notes on the SIGGRAPH '79 Film and Videotape Retrospective were part of an experiment in moving my blog toward something I've long intended for it to be: a studio log where I can take notes on and organize reference material related to my practice.

I've been doing a lot of PDF and website downloading lately, fueled by an uneasy feeling that the knowledge avalanche all around us is burying decades and centuries of texts with heaps of incoherent, profit-driven AI slop. So I read through old scanned magazines, catalogs, out-of-print books, and save or highlight little snippets that interest me.

An excerpt about creating text overlays in TV broadcasts using electronic character generators from Television Graphics: From Pencil to Pixel (Douglas Merritt, 1987)

I appreciate how much of this is available through archive.org, though I've been saving offline copies, too, in the event that the unthinkable happens and all their content is zapped out of existence. (I suppose it will happen at some point, but hopefully not in my lifetime.)

MyLifeBits

I don't know if you call this archivist's instinct, paranoia, practical preparedness, or what. But I do remember being quite struck last year reading about Chester Gordon Bell, a computer engineer who designed several of the PDP minicomputers. In the 1990s, he helped found Microsoft Research, where he explored the fields of telepresence and quantified self/lifelogging. His research project was called MyLifeBits, which was an effort to develop a software platform to store all manner of personal telemetry, media, etc. as a digital backup for one's life. Bell wrote several books and gave a whirlwind of talks about this work. In 2002, the BBC said this of the project in an article titled "Microsoft plans online life archive":

Microsoft researchers are working on ways to create a "back-up brain" that will do a much better job of containing and cataloguing every picture you take, document you write or conversation you record. The scientists collaborating on the project believe that the database of your life could hold a vast array of items that are automatically catalogued and as easy to search as Google. If it proves successful, the project could realise the dreams of hypertext visionary Vannevar Bush, who first floated the idea of a lifestore more than 50 years ago. The MyLifeBits research group is based at Microsoft's research lab in San Francisco.

New Scientist magazine reveals that Gordon Bell, one of the scientists driving the MyLifeBits project, is already putting as much material as he can in a directory of his life. It reports that every e-mail message Mr Bell sends and receives is already being stored along with everything he reads or buys online. Mr Bell has also started recording all phone conversations and any meetings he attends.

MyLifeBits was never finished. In later years, Bell conceded that the smartphone would come to fulfill the role imagined for MyLifeBits, and presumably his goals for the work shifted or shrank.

Bell died in 2024. His website is still online, though links are slowly beginning to break. And while Bell's website provides a nice catalog of his publications and talks, it's unclear what happened to the decades of telemetry and memories he collected on his own life.

To test the application, Bell is downloading his own life onto a hard drive at the [Microsoft] media lab. His database spans more than a century of data: the first entry consists of photographs of his parents taken as children in 1900 and the last entry (as of Thursday morning) was a website he browsed before he was interviewed for this article. —"Saving Your Bits for Posterity," Wired, Dec. 6, 2002

Chester Gordon Bell models "the instrumented me."

The siren song of cataloging

There's an obvious cautionary tale here: Don't build your legacy (or catalog, if you prefer) at the expense of building your life. It's especially relevant to those among us who experience near-obsession with modularity, information structure, and preservation, cheered on by the possibilities of self-made software. Perhaps we love the history of hypertext, we write our own programming languages, we prefer Markdown or plain text over proprietary file formats. We invoke Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson, nevermind the irony of the Xanadu Project's fate as a perpetual demo. We may even try, at some point, to develop some overarching "everything machine."

"What have you been up to lately?"

"I'm writing this... software."

"Oh, cool. What's it do?"

(Eyes widen) "Everything."

"What do you mean everything?"

(Eyes close) "It does everything. It's, like, a self-compiling system for making open-ended systems. OK, OK, imagine that—" (sips coffee) "You know the hypertext paradigm? Never happened. The web browser, the iPhone, man, NONE of that shit ever happened. THAT'S what I'm building. It's not software, really. It's more like an operating system built on a conceptual framework. So it can be anything, everything, simultaneously. And it's really simple to use. Well, it will be when I finish it." —my recent post on merveilles.town

I tumbled down these paths recently. They're fun, but they're not fruitful, for better or worse. I'm now realizing that I can collect and preserve things without the full gravity of building "C:\Dropbox\My Lasting Legacy.zip." Hence: studio log. Excerpt what's relevant, save it offline, maybe mirror it online, and then actually use it for something. Find a cool animation technique from the 70s that was made obsolete by computers? Document it, write about it, then try it. That's the plan, anyway.

The internet is (not) forever

The other cautionary tale: what's online isn't online forever, even when you've dedicated decades to explicitly working toward digital preservation as Bell did.

One side of that coin is "aaaah, quick, print out all the websites and put them in 3-ring binders!" (Y'all have 3-ring binders, still, right?) But the other side is, "ehhh, this'll be offline soon enough." And that's the freeing side that reminds me that my logs don't need polish or editorial consistency. They can just be however they are, warts and typos and all.

Another electrical refrigerator

2026-05-18T00:00:00Z

From the January 1926 issue of Electrical Merchandising.