Tribute to Old New Media

Process:

As I am visual oriented I wanted to do something with graphics for this first assignment of NMNT. Teletext was interesting. Then I found out last year there was a project which used the coolest feature of Teletext to play with. As I couldn't think of anything cooler I went on brainstorming. Old computer graphics have a pretty cool history so I thought of retro interfaces that did not evolve while technology did. So, I wanted to create retro interfaces for the newest touch screen technology, high resolution screens and powerful CPU’s. As I searched the web I stumbled upon a project called iOS ‘86. Later I found out that these graphics were already downloadable as a theme for jailbroken iPhones. Not cool to evolve on this idea.

An old colored television with CRT screen also felt as a cool thing I could base my project on. The features of these old tv’s made me think of the trend of high definition screens in every device we see nowadays. Sometimes seeing pixels feels comfortable to me. That’s why I came up with the idea of creating the old TV screen experience during regular computer usage.

This is the concept I stuck with. I developed an application that lets you play with the pixelation and the noise of your computer screen. First I thought this is a project where OpenFrameworks provides all I wanted. I needed real time pixel editing of the desktop screen. I found a project called corrupt.desktop which pretty much did the real time pixel editing but with different filters. I quickly discovered it was too ambitious for me to do this project with OpenFrameworks. This is mainly because I don’t have any experience with OF or C at all. I probably wouldn’t have finished it in time.

By thinking of alternatives, Processing popped up in my mind. With some workarounds I could pretty much reach the same goal in functionality as with OF. I’m more familiar with Processing / Java so that was the way to go for me. The workaround I built in is a webcam that is used to record a second screen instead of directly using the laptop screen itself. 

The installation is called ‘Pixelator’. By changing the pixel size and amount of noise it is possible to experience different types of old screens during regular computer usage on a high definition screen.  

Pixelator:

We get more and more served with high definition content in software, videos, the web and on TV. Everything becomes HD nowadays. Smartphones and tablets already have such a high resolution that pixels are invisible. The higher the resolution, the more pixels, the better. Sometimes, I disagree. 

When everything is pixel perfect we might want to take a step back to a quality that is worse. I think this is a turning point just as we expect to experience it with games. Once the design of a game becomes so real, we start to dislike it. 

A high resolution on a computer screen is great for displaying many windows at the same time. But, we don’t want to have a screen that is too clean. I think we could use some visible pixels, especially during regular browsing. Google and Youtube already made a step in this direction because they use a gray colored background that is slightly pixelated which gives it a bit of a canvas look. It feels more natural.

In this installation the effect of pixelation is exaggerated and reminds us of the quality of early CRT screens or computer graphics.