Analog video signal glitching
I built a dirty video mixer, a simple device that intentionally corrupts video signals to create unpredictable visual glitches. One potentiometer, two switches, two inputs, one output. That’s it (instructions here).
It works by imperfectly combining two video signals. The glitches emerge precisely because it’s not mixing them properly.
I mixed a digital HDMI signal from my laptop with an analog Lion King VHS tape, displayed on an analog TV. The results: distorted colors, shifting images, horizontal stripes.
The mixer responds mostly to the analog VHS signal; the digital-to-analog conversion doesn’t merge as cleanly. Two analog inputs would probably work better, but the digital/analog combination still produced cool results.
The dirty mixer in action
