{"id":378,"date":"2010-11-16T21:25:34","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T01:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blairneal.com\/?p=378"},"modified":"2010-11-16T21:25:34","modified_gmt":"2010-11-17T01:25:34","slug":"the-wobbulator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/the-wobbulator\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wobbulator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/16906546\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I was finally able to cobble together a video for Nam June Paik&#8217;s Wobbulator. It was one of my favorite pieces of equipment during my residency at the Experimental Television Center, and I was confused about why there wasn&#8217;t a lot of information out there about it on the web. There are a few grainy youtube videos but they don&#8217;t show a lot of the exterior of the device or any of the real time manipulations, so I wanted to make a little educational video. Most of the Wobbulator&#8217;s source images in this video were either from a camera pointed out a window, or just from straight video feedback.<\/p>\n<p>For a lot more information, check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.experimentaltvcenter.org\">Experimental Television Center&#8217;s<\/a> website in their Video History Project area. There are tons of great articles on early analog video tools and techniques, but in particular there is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.experimentaltvcenter.org\/history\/tools\/ttool.php3?id=28&#038;page=1\">very detailed article on the wobbulator<\/a>. Just to give you some more info, here is the first paragraph of the article on the device:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A raster manipulation unit or \u2018wobbulator\u2019 is a prepared television which permits a wide variety of treatments to be performed on video images; this is accomplished by the addition of extra yokes to a conventional black and white receiver and by the application of signals derived from audio or function generators on the yokes. The unit is a receiver modified for monitor capability; all of the distortions can thus be performed either on broadcast signals or, when the unit is used as a monitor, on images from a live or prerecorded source. Although the image manipulations cannot be recorded directly, they can be recorded by using an optical interface. The patterns displayed on the unit are rescanned; a camera is pointed directly at the picture tube surface and scans the display. The video signal from this rescan camera is then input to a videotape recorder for immediate recording or to a processing system for further image treatment. The notion of prepared television has been investigated by a number of video artists and engineers; this particular set of modifications was popularized by Nam June Paik. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I also made a quick music video with the wobbulator as a key component&#8230;check it out <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/16443609\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more on my experience at the experimental television center check out a few of these links<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blairneal.com\/blog\/etc-day-1\/\">[1]<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blairneal.com\/blog\/etc-day-2\/\">[2]<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blairneal.com\/blog\/etc-day-3\/\">[3]<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blairneal.com\/blog\/the-first-of-videos-from-the-etc\/\">[4]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This video is now featured on <a href=\"http:\/\/rhizome.org\/editorial\/3880\">Rhizome<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/createdigitalmotion.com\/2010\/11\/create-analog-motio-nam-june-paik-and-a-modular-rack-processor\/#comments\">Create Digital Motion<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/hackaday.com\/2010\/11\/17\/crt-art-wobbulator\/\">Hack a day<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2010\/11\/nam_june_paiks_wobbulator.html\">Makezine<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/news\/archive\/2010-11\/19\/wobbulator-creates-beautiful-patterns-from-old-tvs\">Wired <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.notcot.org\/post\/36062\/\">Notcot<\/a> among others<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nam June Paik&#8217;s Wobbulator. A documentary style video, and brief description of this famous piece of visual equipment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,12],"tags":[28,70],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-portfolio","category-video-art","tag-experimental-television-center","tag-wobbulator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blairneal.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}