“The road begins from here. Teletext is the future.” Artist Janne Suni May 2012

Teletext, first invented some 30 years ago, utilizes the “vertical blanking interval” lines that together form the dark band dividing pictures horizontally on the television screen. Technically it has remained almost unchanged until recently when TV became digital. Teletext being an amazing success story still attracts millions of visitors daily for the latest news headlines, weather reports or sports results.

The potential of Teletext as an tool for artistic expression has not yet been fully discovered though the aesthetics of Teletext have slowly creeped in to the most fashionable street ware, graffiti and fine art. Is the next big word in intellectual small talk of the hip, rich and famous going to be teletextualism? Time will show, but since it happens The International Teletext Art Festival gives the possibility to the ARD Text users to decide for themselves.

Participating artists: Ashley Anderson, Bym, Frederic Cambus, Max Capacity, Cordula Ditz, Maria Duncker, Dan Farrimond, Kathrin Günter, Francis Hunger, Juha van Ingen, Raquel Meyers, Dave Needham, Rich Oglesby, Seppo Renvall, Janne Suni, Jarkko Räsänen and Kari Yli-Annala

The International Teletext Art Festival is a FixC cooperative project made in collaboration with ARD Text.

More info and press images:

Juha van Ingen FixC phone. +358 (0)405932694 email: itaf at fixc.fi

Info on exhibition: www.pflueger68.de/itaf.html

ARD text website: www.ard-text.de

FixC cooperative: www.fixc.fi

More on works and artists:

Ashley Anderson

works: Glass, Help, Miss Brand

www.flickr.com/photos/pressstarttobegin

My work springs from examining economies of representation in early video games through the prism of art theory, materials, process, and history. Given the wide on-line availability of archived visuals and emulation programs which allow image capturing, the video games of my childhood have acquired a new graphical accessibility. I transpose these digital relics into real objects through drawing, painting, and printmaking. The images I use were never intended to be realized as objects d'art, but I am doing just that.

BYM

works: Dive!, Visit Greece, Teletext love, Rick Perry said oops

www.fredrik-olsson.com

During Swedish royal wedding in the summer of 2010 BYM made his first teletext art broadcast of cross stich instructions based on news photos. He is also a well known artist within the ANSI art scene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_art).

BYM has elaborated a pixel art style which takes inspiration from the act of painting and retro computer gaming. His motifs consists mostly of improvised miniature sceneries.

Frederic Cambus

works: Textcity

www.cambus.net

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by type, fonts and printed materials. Growing up during the golden years of text terminals, PC's 80x25 text mode displays, Dot Matrix printers, and French Minitel (using Videotex display, closely related to Teletext), I naturally became a text mode artist. After drawing ASCII and ANSI art for over fifteen years, I've been turning myself to Teletext, a media offering a similar manner of expression, only with a more global and broadened audience.

Max Capacity

works: Apezilla, City 3, Gun 1, Mountain, Skull 2

http://maxcapacity.tumblr.com/

Max Capacity suffers from a severe but well documented case of data-addiction, as well as a fetish for obsolete media and electronics. He currently lives and works on the outskirts of Silicon Valley, California, planning super-villain style revenge on the world.

Cordula Ditz

works (5): Kill TV

www.corduladitz.de/

Aspects of the uncanny dominate many of Cordula Ditz's work. Her installations include found footage and staged video works, paintings and industrial materials such as mirror glass or neon.She examines the theme of uncanniness using various methods as making use of the relationship between words and the feelings they can evoke.

Maria Duncker

works (3): Teletext as Fireplace

www.northernvideoart.net/artists/mariaduncker

Teletext as Fireplace is a homage to all mind-worming artificial fires .

Maria Duncker is a Helsinki based artist who has recently been working with video, music and performance.

Dan Farrimond

works: At Least I Don't Have to Go to Work, Rob Hubbard Ain't No Sound Monkey, Slacking, Roberto, Teletext Isn't Dead

www.illarterate.co.uk

Dan Farrimond (Harry Yack) is a multimedia artist fascinated by retro technology and its associated aesthetics.

As we enter the Internet Age, teletext as we know it is in the last throes of its operational life. How will it adapt, if at all, to a constantly shifting technological climate? Will the internet be its saviour, or will this final bastion of a bygone age be lost to the annals of time?
If teletext is to go the way of video games arcades and audio cassettes, it certainly won't be forgotten. It is the grandfather of 21st century computing with hundreds upon hundreds of tales to tell, all on a 40 x 24 character grid.

Kathrin Günter

works (5): Star Shots

www.fotokatie.com/katier

Kathrin Günter has been exploring extensively gossip, star behaviour and the phenomenon of paparazzi photography. Her recent researches and investigations focus on thought-o-graphic experiments, photo chemical processes, spirit photography and other invisible phenomena of the early twentieth century.
The Teletext,- or rather Celebritext format adds yet another colourful playground to the infamous series "star shots", which the artist has been continuously enjoying and elaborating since 1999.

Throughout various media, formats and techniques "star shots" exposes the scandalous world of celebrity, self in-scene-ing and paparazzi photography.

Francis Hunger

works (5): Equations

www.irmielin.org

Five equations on differently coloured backgrounds create a short circuit between usually independent topical fields. The viewer might especially enjoy these equations with the TV program running with sound and adding an additional topical layer.

Juha van Ingen

works (5): Transmission

www.juhavaningen.com

'Transmission is the act of passing something on in to another place' .. Wikipedia

Juha van Ingen is a Helsinki based visual artist working in various mediums including lo-tech web and video art.

Raquel Meyers

works (5): Do you go where I go?

www.raquelmeyers.com

Raquel Meyers (Cartagena, 1977) works with low-res graphics and photography for performance, web, video and installations. Currently she works with storytelling in text mode (ascii, petscii, etc) together with Goto80. Lightrhythmvisuals released her collected works in 2010 on the DVD ‘Useless, Yet Crucial’. It shows her characteristic mix of black humour, surreal imagery and low-res graphics.

Meyers grew up with black and white photography, singing in grind core bands, selling books and watching disturbing movies. During her time in Entter (2000-2007) she developed a frenetic style that is still “blowing minds (or causing seizures)” as Wired put it. There is little if any sentimentality for old technologies. It is the brutalist way that fascinates her, noticeable in animation works such as The Emperor’s Snuff Box (2008) and the stop motion work Dodekafobia (2009). The frenetic brutalism culminated with Polybius (2010) that mimicked a sense deleting arcade game from the 1980s, and her solo A/V performanceError Holidays (2010).

Since 2004 she has performed at VJ-festivals like Mapping and Cimatics, at 8bit events like Tokyo Blip Festival and the Playlist exhibition, aswell at Transmediale, LABoral and LEV Festival. She currently lives and works in Sweden.

Dave Needham

works: Deadmedia XIII, Teletext DCLXVI, SVCCVBVS X, Seance IV, Deadmedia XXI

www.hyphenzoo.co.uk

Description: / designer / artist / illustrator / technologist DEADMEDIA : hauntology / brutalism / folklore / digital / analogue / pseudosatanism / modernism / english gothic cinema / obsolecense / superstition / kvlt / obscurantism PLATFORMS : ZX81 / ZX Spectrum / BBC Micro / Teletext / Diskbombs STATEMENT : These specific works in Teletext format came as a reaction to the end of Teletext broadcasting in the UK.

Rich Oglesby

works: Amelie, Lul, Maxtele, Rery, Topher

www.prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com

A collection of people who make the internet interesting for me ... and Amelie ...

Seppo Renvall

works (3): Pirkko visiting Boltanski's exhibition

www.northernvideoart.net/artists/sepporenvall

Seppo Renvall's wide-ranging, multi-faceted production stands at the apex of the Finnish experimental moving image. In Renvall's films personal material is often combined with a physical re-working of the properties of the film.

Jarkko Räsänen

works (5): Wolfram

www.jarkkorasanen.com

Wolfram is a narrative about returning to nature, that is based on images generated with 2 dimensional game of life algorithms. Also a signal that was sent to outer space in 1970's is included in the adventure.

Jarkko Räsänen is a Berlin/Helsinki based media artist working with video, photography, sound installations and software design. He is interested in human machine interaction and in the concept of realism in relation to audiovisual media.

Janne Suni

works: Mozart, Mr-T, Pipi, Ytytyty

www.fairlight.fi/tempest

Janne Suni is a time traveller from 1980, who is cocky enough to think he can squeeze something visually pleasing out of the archaic teletext format. Suni is most comfortable working with very limited fixed palettes consisting of conflicting colours. In the present time he plans to start a long and successful career in teletext graphics. "The road begins here. Teletext is the future"

Kari Yli-Annala

www.northernvideoart.net/artists/kariyliannala

works: Gerüchte und Lügen (Pinocchio-Kuckuck mash-up)

I'm an artist and researcher of moving image, based in Helsinki. In my work "Gerüchte und Lügen (Pinocchio-Kuckuck mash-up)" I use letters, composition and colours to build up the figures of cuckoo and Pinocchio. They form together as a kind of machinic teamwork, transforming some innocent lies to echoing rumours.