Hobbyists to the Front by Emma Dickson
In October 2024, EAI organized Open Circuits Revisited, a weekend of programming reflecting on 50th anniversary of Open Circuits: An International Conference on the Future of Television and launching our new two-part publication, The New Television: Video After Television. In tandem with this event, EAI is pleased to publish a series of oral histories, original essays, and archival materials that further illuminate the history of video art and the legacy of Open Circuits.
Media art conservator and artist Emma Dickson begins the series with a reflection on the decline of consumer cathode ray tube (CRT) technology and the necessary role of CRT hobbyists and technicians today. Dickson’s accompanying appendix is an important guide to the current landscape of CRT hobbyist networks and resources.
Illustration from Videofreex’s Spaghetti City Video Manual (1973), p.32.
One can fail to be a professional, but one cannot fail to be an amateur.¹
In his article “After the Amateur: Notes,” film programmer and writer Ed Halter surveys the historical use of the word “amateur” in relation to professional filmmaking and photography. He sums up the division quite neatly: “Professionals pursued careers. Amateurs pursued hobbies.”² But not all industries are able to sustain such a neat divide. For decades in North America a culture of professional repairmen, electronics enthusiasts, and innovative video artists saw thousands of people experimenting with cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions both as a career and a hobby. With a robust professionalized ecosystem supporting the maintenance of these machines, amateurs and professionals were able to remain distinct categories.
Now that these older televisions have mostly disappeared from daily life and are no longer manufactured, this binary no longer applies. Facing obsolescence, the professionalized CRT information ecosystem of the 1940s-1990s has been incompletely absorbed into today’s network of hobbyist-maintained resources. In considering this history, I want to highlight how these often informal reservoirs of information can be useful not only to hopeful hobbyists but also to professional conservators and artists. Without systems for professionalization, professionals must rely on amateur-led resources and knowledge pools as I have as a technician on conservation projects.
Electronics Amateurs at Open Circuits
At the time of the original Open Circuits conference in 1974, the distinction between a professional and hobbyist video artist or toolmaker was almost non-existent. Video art enthusiasts depended both on informal networks of collaborators and on public resources to pursue their craft. The three organizers, Gerald O’Grady, Fred Barzyk and Douglas Davis, came from the public university system, public television, and the arts, respectively. Theirs was a cohort extremely representative of the video arts scene who blurred the boundary between the amateur electronics enthusiasts and professional artists. “‘Creator’ and ‘technologist,’” as video preservationist Mona Jimenez describes, “did not have separate meanings.”²
Popular Electronics cover image, January 1974.
As justification for the urgency of the conference, the proposal for the original Open Circuits states, somewhat pleadingly, that, “There is new equipment on the market daily, and the market itself is constantly changing...Cassettes and cartridges are upon us.”³ The technology most commonly available to artists and laypeople alike during Open Circuits would have been CRT televisions and tube cameras like the portapak or Sony 3400 series. These tools were relatively easy to hack due to the methods of their construction and the supporting ecosystem of knowledge that surrounded them. For example, Videofreex, an artist collective founded in New York City in 1969, published The Spaghetti City Video Manual⁴ the year before the conference. It offered an extremely comprehensive explanation of the function and repair of portapaks and video playback systems and would remain a bible for video artists for decades. In 1970, early video periodical Radical Software published its first issue. Though in total only 11 issues would be distributed, its cultural impact was enormous. One of the co-editors of its fifth issue, Michael Shamberg, with Raindance Corporation, wrote Guerrilla Television⁵ in 1971. The publication was a highly influential “meta-manual” for artists looking to use new media tools to create alternative networks of broadcasting.
Outside of the rather concentrated video art world and select college programs, information on these consumer electronics was most easily gained in the United States through trade and hobbyist magazines and books. Radio-Electronics and Popular Electronics, two magazines aimed at electronics hobbyists and experimenters, dominated the market in 1972. Both were available at electronic parts stores like RadioShack for 60 and 50 cents, respectively, and offered product reviews, comprehensive build guides, and information on new manufacturing techniques. They also served as a gateway to a technician and repair education of CRTs through their frequent advertisement of such courses. By 1982, Popular Electronics reported an average monthly circulation of 409,344 copies, making it the most widely distributed electronics magazine in the world.⁶
The Disappearance of CRT Professionals
In 2024, you cannot buy or make a new CRT television or computer monitor. The manufacturing process is too complicated to be recreated even by extremely dedicated hobbyists. The only viable way to obtain CRT equipment is on the secondary market. If you do acquire a monitor and manage to turn it on there will be nothing to receive. It will forever await a signal. CRT monitors in circulation today are fundamentally unable to perform the task they were designed to do without the aid of a supplied transmitter.
The decline of the production of CRT monitors and the networks of knowledge surrounding them happened fairly rapidly following the proliferation of LCD televisions, which were preferred by consumers for their lower bulk and higher resolution. By late 2007, LCDs outsold CRTs globally for the first time.⁷ Videocon, the last largescale manufacturer of cathode ray tubes, stopped production in 2015. CRT TVs were pulled from production for the consumer market around the same time.⁸ There are still industries such as aviation and the military that utilize CRT tubes in their equipment. At least one company, Thomas Electronics, currently claims to produce tubes for these industries. Nonetheless, the consumer electronic market for CRT monitors has died.
Given the impracticality of such an object, the once relatively large ecosystem of repair shops and service classes designed to teach a lay person to repair their CRT television have disappeared. However, it could be argued that the domain of hobbyist or layperson electronic tinkering and repair had been in decline before the CRT stopped production. By 2003, Popular Electronics had published its last issue under the name Poptronics. Other hobbyist magazines like Electronics Now, formerly Radio-Electronics, and Elementary Electronics Magazine had already halted publication—the former in 1999 and the latter 1981.
Bridging the Gap: Professionals as Hobbyist Helpers
Advertisement in Popular Electronics, January 1974.
The need to conserve CRT technology is undeniably urgent as the supply of available CRTs will only continue to decline. The technical and physical specificities of CRT monitors shaped decades of media consumption, and it is of value to be able to access them to watch media produced during these eras. From a conservation perspective, some artworks are best served by prolonging the life of the original hardware as long as possible. Artworks like Nam June Paik’s Zen for TV (1981), for example, require the context of a physical CRT through the direct alteration of a CRT’s deflection yoke.⁹ As media preservationist Emanuel Lorrain argues, the CRT offers a specific visual experience that remains distinct among televisions.¹⁰ CRTs produce a distinct electrical sound, their pixels have softer edges than LCD pixels, and they generally show more contrast in an image. They also have a distinctly electrical “feel” of static that clings to their screens. These qualities create an object impossible to simply emulate. There is no substitute; repair and conservation are the only options.
So far, conservation education has struggled to fill the knowledge gap left by the death of popular electronics magazines and servicing courses. Instead, the educational ecosystem has relied heavily on the expertise of individuals like CT Lui, Nam June Paik’s longstanding media conservator since 1968, and Dave Jones, a technologist involved with the Experimental Television Center (ETC) in the 1970s who developed many industry-standard machines for analog video processing, keying, and colorizing. As far as I’m aware there are no conservation programs providing comprehensive electronics training that would enable graduates to competently diagnose and repair CRT television or computer monitors. Similarly, electronics university programs have shifted their focus away from cathode ray technology. In this space, retro video game enthusiasts, artists, and obsolete tech obsessives are emerging with the most experience repairing and altering CRTs. However, the siloing of these communities, for example, in online forums, creates niche skill sets—meaning that it is difficult for any one person to effectively develop a familiarity with CRT technology. Professionals such as conservators or technicians who may see themselves as distinct from CRT hobbyists still have the opportunity to benefit from these communities by supporting their knowledge distribution efforts and keeping in contact with active participants.
Becoming a CRT Hobbyist
I became a CRT hobbyist after a tool-maker residency at the experimental media arts organization Signal Culture.¹¹ I had recently taken two “Circuit Analysis” classes at my local community college and read through Forrest Mims’ Introduction to Electronics (1972). These efforts gave me enough knowledge to be useless as a professional technician but engaged and inquisitive as a hobbyist. The residency introduced me to an archive of equipment and build guides that I had no hope of understanding, and I spent the next few years looking for information on how CRTs worked.
Illustration from Videofreex’s Spaghetti City Video Manual (1973).
The first step in becoming a CRT hobbyist is, of course, to acquire a CRT. It will be impossible to develop a hobbyist’s love for a CRT without confronting its unique physicality directly. If you are fortunate enough to live close to a media lab like Signal Culture or The Media Archeology Lab,¹² both in Colorado, you can simply arrange a visit and utilize their equipment. For most people your best bet will be to check e-cycling centers which often resell CRTs quite cheaply, thrift stores or online marketplaces like eBay and Facebook Marketplace.
Once you have a CRT television or computer monitor, you can begin to learn more about how your particular model works. The best way to go about this is to take it apart and put it back together again. Guides on how to safely take apart a CRT, explanations of how the circuitry works, and your model’s schematics will all be necessary to gain a greater understanding of its functionality and the general layout of CRTs as a whole. When searching for this information myself I found that the digital resources listed in the appendix proved most fruitful. Artist websites also frequently host build guides for modifications to CRTs or CRT accessories which can help deepen your understanding and experience. My favorite examples of this are Tetsuo Kogawa’s website¹³ and Cracked Ray Tube,¹⁴ a collective run by James Connolly and Kyle Evans.
Just as earlier video artists and electronics hobbyists relied on networks of information and support, today's hobbyists also need spaces where they can congregate to ask questions and discuss their projects. Some of the resources listed in the appendix below are forums which foster these types of communities, but it is also still possible to develop these connections in the physical realm. Most areas with enough population density will have another person interested in CRTs. Makerspaces, art collectives, the DIY scene, and local film or electronic archival institutions are all good places to start. Artist or toolmaker residencies also provide the opportunity to connect with likeminded hobbyists.
Conclusion
Hobbyists are now essential keepers and producers of CRT knowledge. While at the time of this essay the digital communities engaged in this practice are fairly active and prolific, these online resources themselves possess an inherently ephemeral quality. In the interests of preserving these resources in one place I’ve compiled an appendix of the resources that I have personally found the most useful. It is inevitable that the information compiled in this appendix will eventually cease to be accessible. With this unavoidable tragedy in mind, professionals become amateurs and amateurs become professionals. We need for these two spheres to work together because they each possess unique skills.
Amateurs must be willing to seriously consider the preservation and distribution of their work with some of the rigor of professionalism. As they continue to use CRTs to create a visual experience that cannot be replicated by LCDs, both the work and the knowledge that allowed them to create it must be well documented and publicly accessible. Without such diligence a generation of art and electronic experiments can and will easily be lost. In turn, conservators and their colleagues in professional spaces must help build informational resilience by effectively navigating hobbyist knowledge spaces. In blurring the boundary between these two spheres, we can enrich both and lengthen the lifespan of these obsolescing machines.
Appendix
|
Name |
Type of Resource |
Maintained by |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Forum |
Multiple Moderators |
|
|
|
|
Forum |
Multiple Moderators |
|
|
Forum |
Chris King |
|
|
|
Forum |
Multiple Moderators |
|
|
|
Forum |
Multiple Moderators |
|
|
|
Archive |
Samuel M. Goldwasse |
|
|
|
Archive |
David E.F. Gleason |
|
|
|
|
Archive |
Experimental Television Center |
|
|
Archive |
|
Has scanned PDFs of all 11 issues of Radical Software. It also has a database that allows you to search through all the issues for particular content. |
Emma Dickson has worked in the preservation of time-based media since 2015. They have worked with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Modern Museum, The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Small Data Industries, Shulea Cheang, and the Electronic Literature Organization. They currently work at Antimodular Research in Montreal. You can follow their continuing experiments with CRTs at emmadickson.info.
Notes
Ed Halter, “After the Amateur: Notes,” Rhizome, April 29, 2009, https://rhizome.org/editorial/2009/apr/29/after-the-amateur-notes/.
Mona Jimenez, “Electronic Video Instruments and Public Sector Funding,” in The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued, ed. Kathy High, Sherry Miller Hocking, and Mona Jimenez, vol. 1 (Bristol, England: Intellect, 2014), 106.
Fred Barzyk, Gerald O’Grady, and Douglas Davis, “Open Circuits: Art at the Beginning of the Electronic Age: Project proposal.” Electronic Arts Intermix, 1972, https://www.eai.org/supporting-documents/383/w.1244.0.
Available at https://archive.org/details/ETC0916.
Available at https://archive.org/details/guerrillatelevis0000sham.
William L. Phillips, "STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685)," vol. 20, no. 1. Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, January 1982. p. 89.
Wolfgang Gruener, “LCD TVs outship CRT TVs for the first time,” TG Daily, February 19, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080226094529/http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36119/118/.
T. E. Narasimhan, “Onida exits DVD business, aims to phase out CRT TV manufacturing by 2015,” Business Standard India (New Delhi), January 28, 2014. https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/onida-exits-dvd-business-aims-to-phase-out-crt-tv-manufacturing-by-2015-114012800284_1.html.
A deflection yoke is a magnetic focusing lens created by having two copper windings in a saddle shape sit perpendicular to each other on the neck of a CRT. It is what focuses the vertical and horizontal scanning of the CRT image.
Emanuel Lorrain, “Obsolete Equipment,” in Digital Art Conservation: Theory and Practice: The Project Digital Art Conservation, ed. Bernhard Serexhe (Vienna: Ambra V, 2013), 234.
Signal Culture, founded in 2012 by Jason Bernagozzi, Debora Bernagozzi and Hank Rudolph, is in Loveland, Colorado: https://www.signalculture.org/
The Media Archeology Lab, founded in 2009 by Dr. Lori Emerson, operates out of University of Colorado, Boulder’s campus: https://www.mediaarchaeologylab.com/