1.2 Tribute to the Television Test Card

Television Test Card Transformations 

On analogue television screens, test cards were shown at times when the transmitter was active but no program was being broadcast. They were used since the earliest TV broadcasts in the late 40s, and were originally physical cards at which a television camera was pointed for calibration and alignment. The audio broadcast while test cards were shown was typically a sine wave tone. Currently, television test cards are rarely shown due to the advent of digital television and 24-hour programming. They can be considered characteristic for the old new medium of analogue television. I find them interesting because of their graphical look, and the fact that they belong to an era where you could get bored without television. 

I created a transformable television test screen; a graphical music interface inspired by a test card from the 70s. The ECR-1-1978 version had 22 SMPTE color bars and a 1kHz sine wave tone. In this interface, a white line is constantly scanning the screen, and when distinct colours are detected, their position is being signalled. The user can manipulate the bars to play around and create an audio and visual composition. 

Because the interface acts like an interactive musical score, I explored John Cage’s graphical music notations. John Cage (1912-1992) was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments. He experimented elaborately with unconventional graphical music notations that leave much room for interpretation by the performers. The prototype also tributes to John Cage, graphical music notations and indeterminacy: the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially different ways.

The prototype is made with Processing and Pure Data, below you can find a video that gives an impression (best to listen to with a headphone).

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_color_bars