Scotty’s One-Man Psychedelic TV Station

Watching TV can be an interactive and creative experience if you decide to make it so.
Updated 12/21/23

The Setup

It’s ludicrous, but I slowly built this setup over the course of a year. The final piece was a microphone, and that’s when I realised that I have a one-man TV station (I mean “psychedelic TV station” literally, it is a station in my office that has TVs that are used to create psychedelia.)
The setup includes two DVD players, a VCR, two video mixers, a circuit-bent Tachyons+ Psychenizer, a working time base corrector, a broken time base corrector, a couple video processors, a video titler, a video camera, a karaoke machine, and a few TVs.
If you want to make your own setup, I highly recommend checking out your local thrift stores/your grandma’s attic/electronic recycling shops to see if you can find cameras, video players, TVs, and maybe even a video color processor or mixer. Another great resource is old electronics auctions. We’ve gotten most of our high quality mixers and TVs from business liquidations where most people view this stuff as essentially garbage.
The minimalist setup that I used for my first few months of video exploration was something called a “dirty video mixer”. You can google instructions on how to make one of your own for about $5.
Another fun thing that I got into was connecting my camcorder directly to my TV, and trying to find a balance in the feedback loops that would last more than a few seconds. I actually got pretty good, and I have a 10 minute clip that I plan to use in a feature film one day.

Feedback Loops

The bread and butter of my psychedelic TV station is the video feedback loop. There are two different types of feedback loop - camera and internal video.
A Camera Feedback Loop is created by pointing a camera at its own output, usually found on a TV or monitor. You can see the camera feedback loop on the diagram above, with the camera pointing at the top TV, which has a clean signal. The camera feedback loop often looks like when you put two mirrors facing eachother, with you in between them.
An Internal Video Feedback loop is created by taking the video output source (usually on a video mixer) and connecting it back into an input. If you’re feeling really crazy, you can plug your output into a video color processor to control the abstract noise. I find that certain settings on most processors will cause the colors to coalesce into geometries and shapes and other cool forms that your pattern-searching brain will be tricked Rorschach inkblot-style into accepting a images.
The real fun begins when you combine the camera and internal video feedback loops using transitions, luma keys, or other mixing techniques allowed by your video mixer of choice.

Be Your Own Video Wizard

Do you know what’s more fun than sitting alone and goofing around with video stuff?
Sitting with your friends and goofing around with weird video stuff!
That’s where the Video Wizards come into my life, and who the above tutorial and what we discuss!
There are a lot of different directions one can take video wizardry, and this tutorial talks about Scotty and his art, as well as Aaron and Malcolm, and how they approach making cool art. This tutorial is a must-watch if you want to find ways to incorporate your friends and their own niche artistic interests into your setup.
After you create your own video art crew, please invite me to your shows and send me your recordings! I am D E S P E R A T E for more alternative television created by underground creators just like you (or you could be, if you haven’t started yet)!
Just email me at lilyellowtags (at) gmail