Category / Articles / Teletext

    Loading posts...
  • Interview: Preserving Our Past, Pixel Addict Magazine

    This month’s Pixel Addict Magazine includes a special feature on the preservation of computing and technology, including (amongst many other things) an interview with a certain tele(text) addict.

    It’s been a while since my last one, so I’ve had the chance to remember cool “new” teletext-related stuff! For the very first time in print, I explain my (recently recovered) submissions to the Mega-Zine, and how I wasn’t even the first teletext artist in my family.

  • Teletext at Jaywick Martello Tower

    Fellow pixel artist and podcaster Carl Attrill has been working with Jaywick Martello Tower to project teletext art onto the exterior of the venue.

    I would describe the tower as TARDIS-like in that it’s much bigger on the inside than it seems from the outside. Hence, this probably requires more projection power than you think!

  • BINFAX

    Binface’s teletext manifesto featured on ‘The Last Leg’

    Count Binface’s teletext-ised election manifesto has been featured on the 6/12/19 edition of Channel 4’s late night talk show The Last Leg with Adam Hills.

    I can’t claim credit for the policies, but I did convert them to teletext for Count B. You can read the whole thing on TEEFAX, or view the second video below for that full Pages From BINFAX experience.

  • Interview: Whatever Happened to Teletext? Daily Telegraph

    Teletext is the subject of a new article by Tom Hoggins, writer of the Telegraph’s Retro Tech series.

    Charting the fate of ‘the Internet of its time’, this excellent write-up features interviews with the legendary Mr Biffo and not-so-legendary Illarterate bloke. (You know, him off this website.)

  • Interview: Teletext’s Creative Legacy, WePresent

    Craig Oldham at WePresent has written an article on the Internet’s role in the development of teletext art post-analogue switchoff.

    Included is a gallery of artwork by myself and Steve Horsley, as well as some of my comments on how teletext art is a useful introduction to graphic design concepts. I suppose I just have to go and learn those concepts now, eh?

  • Illarterate’s ITAF 2013 artwork rebroadcast on YLE Text

    YLE Text are currently rebroadcasting some of Illarterate’s artwork from the 2013 International Teletext Art Festival.

    It is a little known fact, but the Finnish public service have been continuously hosting teletext art for a while now. The Museum of Teletext Art has been running since 2014, and to date has featured the work of dozens of teletext artists on page 805.

    And over the last few weeks, Illarterate’s entries for the 2013 Teletext Art Festival have been on show once again, including includes Sweet Rockall, Good Times the ubiquitous Teletextart.

  • Illarterate @ Wigan Arts Festival 2017

    A Wigan-themed ‘not Bamboozle’ quiz and exhibition of ‘The Lens’ teletext service for Wigan Arts Festival and ‘Bring Your Own Beamer Wigan’ at the Old Courts.

  • Joojon John

    New article: Teletext Fest 2016 retrospective for Digitiser2000

    Read it! Goujon John shall continue staring at you until you do so.

    Can’t be swayed by his piercing gaze? Then perhaps you’ll be interested in this little run-down of events at the first Text Fest in Cambridge earlier this month. It’s more of an extended diary entry than a review, but that didn’t stop us all reading (watching?) Bridget Jones’ effort.

    Disclaimer: the article linked below contains zero references to Bridget Jones. (Whoopee.)

  • New interview: ‘Not a silent titan’ for Mistigris

    Ever wanted to know about those messages I send to my mistress via teletext? Or how on earth you can get away with printing lime green text on a magenta background? Or what the pixel artists of teletext’s heyday are doing now?

    If you answered ‘no’ to all those questions, bear in mind I only typed that first paragraph for the purposes of shameless clickbait. I mean, hey – even the BBC are up to it now, so why shouldn’t I join in?

    And anyway, weren’t all teletext headlines juicy, well-formatted clickbait of the 70s?

  • Teletext Dating @Small Cinema Liverpool

    A selection of templates for a little Liverpool Small Cinema @TeletextDating project for BFI’s Love Film season.

    A project harking back to teletext dating services popular in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s. European services still run phone dating services to this day – in fact in some cases they actually subsidise the whole teletext service.

  • Videotext Vixens – German chatline teletext art in 2015 (18+)

    I wasn’t brave enough to add this to my portfolio, mostly because I created none of the pages exhibited… although I dearly wish I did. Here’s a compilation of chatline art from German teletext in July 2015. This is the censored edition which attempts to conform to YouTube Community Guidelines, but I have no idea…

  • Videotext Forever – 35 Years of ARD Text

    Today, 1st June 2015, marks the 35th anniversary of German teletext service ARD Text. To celebrate its role in the survival of teletext as an artistic medium, here are a handful of pages remembering other events and technologies from the space year 1980.

  • What are you staring at, chump?

    Some early experiments with teletext art from late 2007 and early 2008, inspired by the VBI Microtel project.

    Editing software is Cebra, which is what we all used for teletext art before the plethora of freely-available editors made available post-2014. It has a distinctive typeface (Courier?) that makes it easy to identify from screenshots alone.

    I believe the raw teletext files are “lost media”, but these delightfully crunchy .gif images have survived the harshness of time. On the whole, they are edited image imports – Cebra is particularly good for this type of appropriation art.