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## Cracked Ray Tube (2014)

by James Connolly and Kyle Evans

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An installation of 17 modified cathode ray tube televisions and computer monitors, interfaced with a custom programmed network computer system algorithmically generating audio and video.

Tags: analog cathode ray tube crt digital glitch installation max msp noise performance realtime television transmission tv vga video graphics array

###### Work metadata

- Year Created: 2014
- Submitted to ArtBase: Wednesday Aug 6th, 2014
- Original Url: http://crackedraytube.com/
- Work Credits:
  - James Connolly, primary creator
  - Kyle Evans, primary creator

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###### Artist Statement

Cracked Ray Tube is a realtime audio/video installation and performative piece by artists James Connolly and Kyle Evans. The project explores the latent materiality of analog video through custom-built digital instrumentation interfaced with the hacked communication networks of both analog video transmission and VGA video signals. Driven by a custom programmed algorithmic digital system that uses malfunction as a methodology and performative platform, visuals information is generated through complex high-frequency waveforms juxtaposed with chaotic and uncontrollable feedback signals as hand-wound electromagnets “wobbulate” the displayed imagery, fully exploiting the CRT’s intrinsically hidden yet vastly complex spectrum of sound, image and color. Cracked Ray Tube revives archaic materiality that has acquired a renewed power and potency in the context of flat screens, slick interfaces, and digital immateriality. It investigates the cathode ray tube not as a dead object of the past, but rather as a symbol of the current material culture of obsolescence; a device that is capable of being revived and hybridized with digital tools to generate genuinely new aesthetic experiences that rouse our residual memories of the analog era while undermining our aesthetic fetishization of the “new”.

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