Bob Jaroc's Black Moth Super Rainbow video using busted B/W teevees

Hypertalented filmmaker Bob Jaroc created this video for Black Moth Super Rainbow's track The Sticky. Yes, those are graphics generated by circuit bent television sets. The song is from Black Moth Super Rainbow's latest album, Eating Us.

Video made from modding a bunch of old b&w tvs, playing the seperate parts from the track through them and taping the results + a go on the aftereffects mystery train.

Bob Jaroc on Vimeo

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

MORE: Entertainment

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

wigg1es

I’m also retarded. Nevermind…
angrydroid

Yeah this technique is as old as hippies and is known as Wobblevision. i was never able to get results as cool as this, though. Here’s a link for people interested. It’s much easier than you might think, though be careful and don’t make yourself extra-crispy by touching a large capacitor or something like that. http://petemoss.org/bending/wobble.html
Anonymous

How to safely discharge a cathode ray tube:

Unplug the TV. Find a screwdriver with an insulated rubber handle. Wrap a wire around the screwdriver, and attach the other end to a grounded object. Grounded objects include the screw on a lightswitch, the middle, round prong on a north american power outlet, or sticking a metal pole into the actual ground outside. Now, insert the screwdriver under the rubber “suction cup” anode. You should hear a loud spark. The tube is now discharged, and you can safely touch it until it’s plugged in again.
Godfree

Sweet! That seems like the TV equivalent of painting on film stock with bleach.
silly bobs

@angrydroid

indeed, not hard, but death is waiting in the wings for those who take the back of a tv off lightly. There is enough juce in a tv thats been off for ages to send a fiddler right across a room, dead.

So please understand what your doing and the risks your taking, be carefull.

On a lighter note, i first came across the wobblevision bend hooked up to a dudes amp playing hawkwind-hurry on sundown an age ago. Twas a very spacey pad with that thing twiching in the corner to dave brocks wibbles.
nixiebunny

I assume that only the basic squiggles were made by the TV sets; the rotationally-combined effects would be way too much work to assemble in analog.

I once designed a device to display time on a CRT using Lissajous patterns, but it strove for a “good” display ethic.
dia sobin

Yo, David – dig the musical soundtrack, but I’m missing Freaky Friday! :-(
UnnecessaryUmlaut

If they just gave these TVs a good bonk on the side I’m sure they’d be good as new. Always worked for mine.
Stoked to hear more from these guys.
von Bobo

Yay! new BMSR!
- Brendan McCue
  
  Eating Us has been out for 2 years. It’s not that new.
  - wigg1es
    
    Latest != new
joe blough

hey if you want more BMSR-type stuff… tobacco has 2 solo albums too. latest is maniac meat, and of course F’d up friends from a couple of years ago.
Jim Dandy

WAY back before the Internet, I’d heard you could mod a TV to act like an oscilloscope, but I never found out how. I eventually bought a very cheap used one from a friend.

I’m surprised the mod is this simple (albeit potentially very dangerous).

One or two of the patterns are relatively easy to produce on an oscilloscope or a program that emulates one, but I have no idea about the rest.

A very cool retro display.
jackdavinci

Which makes me wonder why a simple swap of the video and one of the audio cables on modern tvs doesn’t do anything interesting.