The Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer

Today’s sleek and soulless computer animations have a long and quirky history behind them. Steve Rutt and Bill Etra were two of the pioneers of computer animation, and revolutionized the field with their video synthesizer from 1972. In the somewhat surrealistic video below, Bill Etra himself explains some of the features of their synthesizer:

The people at airtightinteractive.com have made an amazing emulator of the video synthesizer, available for free here. Below is a sample image.

September 5, 2012 | Categories: animation, art, Graphic Design, technology | Tags: 3d, animation, art, computer, design, etra, geek, history, online, retro, rutt, technology, tool, video, vintage, vj | Leave a comment