Dan Farrimond The block party returns. Remembering the 2012 Teletext Arts Festival

1 Grafismo | Diseo + Cultura Visual | 2014 ISSN 2386-6950

The block party returns.

Remembering the 2012

Teletext Art Festival

Dan Farrimond

Danfarrimond.co.uk

Palabras clave: Teletext, Art, Festival, Digital.

There it sat in my inbox, an open call for

submissions to the inaugural International

Teletext Art Festival.

Wow, I remember teletext graphics from

the days when British analogue services

didnt view teletext as simply text on

television, a time when the medium was an

artform in its own right. A time when teletext

caricaturists could freely transmit crude

pixel representations of film and pop stars

without fear of recrimination. It was truly the

Wild West of Teletext.

Here in the UK, there used to be a

drawings section of Channel 4 Teletext, an

analogue art gallery of user-submitted

doodles cleverly converted to the teletext

format. I always found it amazing that they

were able to achieve something like Frame

It, because my impression was that all

teletext had to be procedurally generated

by the artless Newsbot 5000, or whatever

they were using to type out stories in 80

words or less. Surely, only a robot could be

so succinct?

But visual sections of teletext had become

a rare treat. Commercial services were

bound by unwritten regulations that stated

there must never be too many graphics on

any one teletext service. Teletext art was

seen as frivolous and childish to a

serious medium for serious news, and

this attitude only became more prevalent as

UK teletext approached its pixellated, glitch-

ridden grave.

Thank goodness for the internet, eh? It may

be a meme-infested pit of recycled jokes,

but there is a lofty balcony reserved for

retired technology. Think of it as dead

media heaven. Archive-halla, the great

second hand shop in the sky.

Submissions for Lektrolabs VBI Microtel project, 2006. Up:

Howdy by Bulldozerman. Down: Circus by Lektrogirl.

I remember becoming fascinated by

Lektrolabs VBI Microtel teletext exhibition

for the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival, albeit

some time after it ended. Under the guise of

fine art, it managed to smuggle past the

censors so many images and sentiments

never before broadcast on public teletext

services. Teletext art, it seemed, was

exploring new ground, and in the process

evolving into a sub-genre of its own.

But the 2012 International Teletext Art

Festival is a perfect transitional point in this

timeline. Just as Ceefax, the worlds first

proper teletext service, was slowly being

phased out, Europe hosted its largest ever

Dan Farrimond The block party returns. Remembering the 2012 Teletext Arts Festival

2 Grafismo | Diseo + Cultura Visual | 2014 ISSN 2386-6950

celebration of the medium, broadcasting the

work of 16 international artists to over a

million televisions in Germany, Finland and

Austria. Nope, teletext wasnt about throw

itself at the mercy of the information

superhighways gas guzzlin mememobile

just yet.

You see, ownership of teletext had

changed. Once the embodiment of

establishment, it had assumed new

meaning in the hands of artists, and as

foolish as it may sound for such a limited

medium, teletext was now free of

restriction. Artists could gleefully rip apart

the yellowing textbook originally written for

an age when individual teletext pages

would cost around 50 to broadcast. 40

years on, they were finally free to

experiment, to push the boundaries.

You might now see why I felt compelled to

enter the 2012 International Teletext Art

Festival. I knew how to code teletext pages

because Id been playing around with the

editors for about five years, without any real

purpose. But now was the time to dig out

the virtual felt tips once more - Frame It

had returned, and on a larger scale than

12-year old me could ever have dreamed!

Except now, it was proper art, given

renewed status as a gallery within your

living room. Genius! It would have been

unthinkable during the dark ages of the

Noughties, when we were all far too

interested in mundane headlines to even

consider such a thing, but teletext was

being reclaimed by the creative community

on our very television screens.

Some of my submissions for the 2012 International Teletext

Art Festival. Left: Switchover Troll. Right: Rob Hubbard.

Okay, so maybe we were only recycling the

corporations rubbish, re-purposing dead

media for more exciting pursuits. But isnt

that a definition of creativity, to explore

areas teletext never dreamed of covering, I

mean? When I pixellated Trollface for

ITAF12, I only did so because it would be

the first time said internet meme had been

seen on teletext. And, er, because I knew it

would be shared endlessly on the internet.

Likewise, I thought it would be a compelling

juxtaposition to represent video game

musician Rob Hubbard in a medium

characterised by its almost total lack of

sound only the clack of a remote control

button being depressed interrupts the low

hum of a cathode ray tube. I wonder what

sort of music Mr Hubbard would have

created had he been let loose on The

Soundtrack to Teletext?

This inaugural staging of the Teletext Art

Festival was significant in so many ways,

not least because it brought together a

variety of international artists working with

all forms of media - illustrators, graphic

designers and musicians - from countries

that never fully embraced teletext, and

those in which it was still prominent.

Most of all, this proved that teletext was

flexible enough to accommodate specific art

styles. There was the glitchy comic book

and VHS cover art inspired pop art of Max

Capacity, the distinctly demoscene style of

Dan Farrimond The block party returns. Remembering the 2012 Teletext Arts Festival

3 Grafismo | Diseo + Cultura Visual | 2014 ISSN 2386-6950

Janne Suni and geometric minimalism of

Juha van Ingen, to name but a few.

The diversity of ITAF12. Up: Apezilla by Max Capacity. Down:

Mr T by Janne Suni.

Then there was Raquel Meyers story-

without-words Do You Go Where I Go, a

moving image cartoon strip that followed

two rabbits on their trip to the pixellated

funfair. Perhaps most notably (at least for

the historians), it featured a llama,

presumably another breakthrough for the

ordinarily unexotic teletext.

And heres the confession. Im not ashamed

to admit I have blatantly aped (or should

that be Apezilla-d?) elements of all these

pieces since 2012.

As a teletext artist, you are naturally forced

to look outside of the medium for influences

and inspiration, since archived teletext art is

very limited indeed. Teletext was, by its

nature, a transient form of communication

pages would be replaced in hours, maybe

even minutes. Unless someone was

resourceful enough to snap a Polaroid of

the screen (or indeed grab an off air VHS

recording), it would be forever lost to the

passage of time, like a bad chalkboard

doodle hastily wiped from existence. If you

missed it, tough turkeys.

Pages from Do You Go Where I Go by Raquel Meyers.

But the International Teletext Art Festival

began a new internet-based record of

archive-worthy (not to mention exhibition-

worthy) pixel art. Though subsequent 2013

and 2014 editions built upon this ethos,

2012 laid the foundations, thrusting teletext

into galleries across a dozen countries and

introducing the continent to a whole new

genre of multimedia graphics. As the

hipsters might say, yeah, teletext art is a

thing, and you have ITAF to thank/blame

for it.

Oh, and that Wild West of Teletext? Well,

we may be closer to such a thing than we

have ever been, since the medium is now

everyones plaything, a freeware virtual

Lego kit to build seven-colour analogue

worlds pixel by text mode pixel. Ladies and

Dan Farrimond The block party returns. Remembering the 2012 Teletext Arts Festival

4 Grafismo | Diseo + Cultura Visual | 2014 ISSN 2386-6950

gentlemen, the Minecraft of the 1980s has

arrived in 2015!

Bibliography

VBI Microtel: http://projects.lektrolab.com/microtel/ International Teletext Art Festival website: http://teletextart.com Teletext Unplugged: ITAF12, Wired Magazine, June 2012: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/07/play/teletext-unplugged An Interview With a Teletext Artist, Computer Arts, August 2013: http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/interactive-design/interview-with-teletext-artist/ Teletext Festival Breathes Life Into Old Tech, BBC News, July 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28193738

The 2015 International Teletext Art Festival will run from 13 August to 13 September on ARD Text, ORF Text, Swiss Text and Arte Text. Dan Farrimond and Raquel Meyers will be part of a jury to decide the prize winner.