Jenny Holzer - brief intro

Art at the Turn of the Millennium, Taschen
Holzer Wikipedia entry

A 'text artist', Holzer uses the structures of mass media to "smuggle messages into the public arena". Taking the form of pointed one liners projected onto such public spaces as the large screen in Times Square, New York, her work, according to the artist herself, revolves around 'Sex, death and war'.

It is these one-liners that interest me. Often they can be loaded with meaning, as the aforementioned artist quote hints at, such as in the Survival series (1983-1985). Quotes such as "Men Don't protect you anymore" and "Protect me from what I want" are often militant in approach and were splattered on billboards around the city.


Selections from Truisms, 1977 onwards

Summer 2007 research project - plan

For the next few months, I will have plenty of time to add to this weblog as the main courses have now finished for the summer.

Plan for summer

1. Continue to work in weblog:
> Research artists that use the pixel graphic style/Teletext as a medium etc.
> Collect magazine cuttings, go to library, buy books, look for sources online etc.
> See what develops from these - record findings in this weblog.
> From these, narrow down what I would like to look at for the research project.

2. Presentation Considerations
> Proposed possible formats. Perhaps have one or two solid concepts for this by the time I return to Uni.
> Arrange some chapters and headings based on research. Even if I am not doing a dissertation it might be useful to get a clearer idea of organisation.

Hopefully I will be ready to start work in earnest when I get back for the start of third year. There will be an introductory lecture and I would like to be prepared to begin designing/writing/whatever.

Possible methods of presentation

> Installation with accompanying text piece.
> Blog and website - text elements in blog, design presentation within the website.

The second of these is looking favourite at the moment but I will continue to consider potentially more interesting methods of presentation as the research continues.

In addition, I will look to purchase an A5 (for portability reasons) sketchbook/notebook in which to record thoughts and to work things out.

Project direction

At this point I felt it might be good to reassess where I am with regards to having a solid idea for a research project. I think that at the moment, the concept is developing quite well as I undertake more and more research into the subject. The jodi stuff really impressed me, as did Arcangel's work, although this is more of a video game pixel graphics thing. Perhaps it will transpire that I will look at different media that utilise this pixel graphic style:

> Teletext
> Video Games (8-bit)
> Early Internet and Internet Art

All of these would be constantly compared to Teletext and how they differ as mediums, including their strengths and weaknesses as methods of communication, in particular as artistic mediums. This has been explored in more detail in a previous post but I just wanted to reinforce and refresh what I propose to look into for this project. I actually already have something of a firm grounding with regards to initial research and could probably mock something up with regards to textual content.

Possible mediums

> A weblog - possible or will this be necessary as a 'side' thing?
> A dissertation - classic style. May be best for my writing style but will it really be as interesting?
> A website. Design aspects would be in the pixel graphic style. I like designing sites so this would be interesting.
> "Teletext cast" via the Internet. Research presented in teletext format. Would have to find out more about the possibilities of creating my own teletext pages. Problems - loading times etc. May not be too bad if this was a supplementary part of the project and the main bulk of the work was done in another medium.
> A video blog/podcast. Getting hands on and producing actual aural accounts of my findings, conversational style? More of a documentary/experiment like the MySpace idea?

Minitel

http://www.beotech.co.uk/minitel.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3142862.stm

The more interactive cousin of Teletext, Minitel was an early computer system that, via telephone lines, could communicate with stores to buy products, access an online telephone book and even chat in much the same way as text messaging today. This was truly the Internet before its time, all in a similar encoding to teletext.

Left is a screenshot from the Minitel service that, visually, resembles the teletext service in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1982, about five years after teletext, it had the advantage of time and advancing of technology. The keyboard interface offers many more possibilities, though it seems from this screenshot the menus are controlled by numbers much like an electronic automated telephone service.

Much like 8-bit video games and the early Internet, the legacy of the Minitel system is largely kept alive today by the Internet. Below is a screenshot from the emulation version from minitel.fr.

Considerations

Maybe I could widen the research project to encompass different types of pixel graphics produced by other media - namely early 8-bit computer games and the early Internet. By also bringing in aspects of the written/printed media I could draw up similarities and contrasts between the different methods of production.

Looking at some of the stuff by Jodi has inspired me to think of areas such as ASCII art, which has not been a widely used medium in teletext but is the same principle of using a basic character set. This article talks about the quest to code a font that reproduces the teletext font on the PC format. It seems the Minitel ASCII and the one used on computers are different despite containing, on the whole, much the same characters. The image to the left shows an Atom VDG (chip for early 1980s computers) character set. Note the strange pixel characters: these are similar to the ones used in Teletext to create images.

Some possible areas for exploration
Take the three mediums and explore the following criteria.

> Use of language. Visual and textual.
> Use of interaction. Methods of interaction - special devices. Remote controls, joypads, pucks etc.
> Format of medium itself. Teletext - televisions - compatibility. Device people are familiar with. Also don't have to purchase a new system
> Purpose and target audience. Reaching different parts of the world, individual services for regional areas. Different reasons in different areas but largely based on information provided by the TV channel.
> Longevity and popularity. Are they still around today?
> Medium as an information service

The main thing, it seems, is that the Internet has largely overtaken the purpose of teletext and, due to its advances in technology, has widened its scope. However Teletext remains much the same. Whilst the 'new age' of digital set top boxes has brought reduced loading times, the abundance of the net and its now relatively inexpensive access has contributed to teletext's reduction in popularity.

The original service as we know it will be phased out in the next few years in the UK with the switch to digital (digital teletext page from Teletext Ltd. screenshot shown right). In fact, teletext, along with early video games, has gained popularity from the Internet's spreading of these via emulation. Maybe this could be my closing statement.

Jodi.org

http://www.jodi.org/

Jodi is a collective of artists founded in the late 1980s by a group of European new media artists. Their early work often used this tactic of mimicking computer glitches and viruses as an aesthetic or humorous device. Today it is run on the Internet by Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans and, whilst still conceptual, encompasses imagery and moving image to generate artwork.

Jodi's blogs
http://blogspot.jodi.org/

Jodi's art blog may seem like a load of random gibberish but this is in fact a reflection, or even an extension, of their ASCII artwork. It's actually quite fun to navigate around because you never know what will happen when you click a link - you may get a 404 error message which links directly to a page of random keyboard mashing or something like this, which looks as though it has been corrupted or something with all the elements moving around on screen in an unnatural fashion.

Text
http://text.jodi.org/

Meanwhile, the text pages of jodi.org are reminiscent of corrupted teletext pages with a poor reception. I've always admired the random quality of these scrambled pages, auto generative artworks in their own right. An idea for a future project may be to create a random gibberish generator in the style of these teletext pages. Click various part of the page to navigate through the various pages (over 100) of keyboard mashing and text fragments from broken files.

Environments
http://sod.jodi.org/

Here one can download a copy of the deconstructed version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I wonder if I could produce something like this in Flash? If so, a 3D interactive environment might be good and challenging to create. The black and white environment can often be hard to navigate but from an aesthetic point of view looks good in a corrupted, bizarre way.

Wrong Browser.com
http://www.wrongbrowser.com/

This simulates a broken browser. Seemingly created in Flash, one can interact by moving around various draggable windows of different colours. Moving them to different areas or typing in text of the screen triggers weird occurrences such as the background changing colour or a flood of text that descends onto the screen. There are also different versions which typify different regions' web sites, such as .co.jp, which has vertical text that reads as though it has been turned 90 degrees.

I like the aesthetic of these pieces and there's something about them that appeals to me. Perhaps it's the knowledge that my computer is not actually experiencing problems and one can revel in the strangely appealing visual representations offered by computer glitches. If I could transpose some of these to an environment and project them onto a video screen I feel I could really immerse the visitor.

Book research

The early Internet and teletext
Information from
Digital Art - Christine Paul
Internet Art - Rachel Greene

The early world wide web was, much like teletext, largely textual and not very sophisticated, at least not by today's standards. Early artworks were often very conceptual, in contrast to the functional works found on teletext. These were driven by a sense of community and ain a spirit of spontaneous interventions. Again, this is in contrast to Teletext, which was regulated and controlled by a select group of people, namely the people that programmed the information.

Theoretician Peter Weibel summarised that the web and cyberspace was a 'distinctly 1960s idea'. In many ways this is true - the origins of teletext, which may be seen as a precursor to the Internet, can be traced back to the 60s. At this point, however, the technology was not sufficently advanced to make cyberspace viable, evidenced by the relatively limited nature of collaborative elements allowed by teletext. What email would later replace and to a more popular extent, telephone conversation and written correspondence would be used by the teletext medium.

Alexei Shulgin devised the WWWAward that rewarded art in categories such as 'Flashing', blinking images which were an integral part of aesthetics on the early web. Nowadays this can be seen as an outdated and irritating technique, especially if overused to the extent that it was in the early days of the net. In a similar way, many advertisements on teletext utilise blinking pixels to draw attention to particular items on screen though these are tolerated as the medium, being as simple and limited as it is, cannot handle an abundance of 'flashing'.

"Successful in a much larger arena than the art world as it exists today, [jodi] reach a much larger interested audience in a much faster interval of time."
--G.H. Hovagimyan, Art Dirt

Serbian web artist Vuk Cosic, originator of the term net.art, founded the ASCII art ensemble Jodi in the late 1980s. The group popularised ASCII, which is an encoded character set for the English language similar to the one used by Teletext, as a medium for artistic expression. Literally turning the common interface inside out with their low-tech graphics they would later go on to produce videos completely created in ASCII art.

In the early 1990s, Thomas S Ray developed Tierra, a computer simulation of artificial life. Part of the visualisation of this was created using simplified graphics and a limited palette much the same as the one used on Teletext.

http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/

Meanwhile, Cory Arcangel's Landscape Study Series blends traditional landscape photography with video game aesthetics to create a pixellated piece reminiscent of the art produced in the teletext format (right). Creating scenery that effectively transcends the media from which it borrows, these pieces take the form of a new kind or manifestation of pop art.

WebTV

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/362780/why-ceefax-and-teletext-rule.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webtv

A couple of articles relating to WebTV, a project set up in the mid-90s. Marketing wise, it failed quite miserably, even after Microsoft bought it out.

"From our latest research, both in the lab and at customers’ houses, we know people want. We focused on usability, content and need.
The results centre around 5 key areas:
1. Value for money
2. Choice
3. Control
4. Simplicity (UI)
5. Convergence (one device)"

The digital set top boxes of today are a product of this but are not the fully functioning Web television service that could potentially be accessed. Teletext was seen as an important aspect of this crossover, however the limitations of the medium meant it could never happen. Thus, the early noughties saw the Internet take over from Teletext due to its increasing speed and capability to broadcast moving image. It would not be until later, though that the Internet became powerful enough to actually broadcast live television. In fact some might say this has actually yet to be achieved until we are viewing HD television, ordering groceries, talking to friends and sending emails via one system.

For now, the Internet provides most, if not all of these but a similar, television broadcast based system has yet to be seen.

Finalising the text document, narrowing the subject

Got the text document ready to be handed in on Thursday morning. Went through looking for formatting/spelling errors and got this printed off in readiness.

As for the project direction I have been having some thoughts. My research so far has been quite broad in its scope and I would like to either branch off or narrow something down which I can develop further for the rest of the semester and into third year.

Some possible areas to explore:
> How has teletext influenced the development of the Internet?
> In what ways has the medium of teletext contributed to the world of pixel art? (eg. Van der Heide)
> How have artists used teletext as a medium/subject to create art? (eg. Rick Moody)

I am sure I will continue to have ideas for this and note them here. Also I understand this comes into more prominence in the next part of the research project after Easter.

Research project PDF

Made a start on creating the document required for the research project to display the image bank and details being collected. Spent some time copy/pasting and copyediting some of the entries from the blog. I have realised that my particular selection of project is slightly different from the norm in that there are no famous exponents of the art as such. They do exist, they are just hard to find since this is a fairly unconventional medium. The research I have been doing up until now has not been solely focused on the images I have collected, it is more generalised.

For this reason, I will continue to work on the document to refine and remedy this problem to a point I am happy with. I will consult tutors for guidance and continue to note in this blog the changes/progress made to the document until the deadline on Thursday the 29th March, a week on Thursday.

An Evening with PText

http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/cabsat/ptext/

The teletext then and now website offers the chance to have an 'Evening with PText', Paramount television's resident teletext service. For archive's sake, the links on the left are all the pages on that channel's broadcasting range. There are about 100 and they can all be navigated by a simple point and click menu system using JPEGs and links within the browser. It would seem that here there is a small problem with loading the links - either Firefox does not render it or the image has been lost. However apart from this, the menu system is a simple way of emulating the teletext menu on a computer system viewable by any browser.

The page in the thumbnail to the right is an explanation of a functionality that can be activated by the remote control. This is yet another practical use of the technology that acts like a kind of digital alarm clock. It can be seen as a primitive precursor to favourite channels on your television set-top box.

Personally I've never used this function before and wondered how it actually worked up until now. Perhaps it's one of those things that not many people use, but it is there nonetheless.

Early teletext

Though from the mid 1970s, these screenshots of early teletext systems do not differ wildly from those we see today. This is due to the medium, in many ways completely unlike the Internet, staying essentially the same throughout this time despite a number of upgrades and add-ons. Thus it may be said that the design of Teletext is distinctly outdated - and in many ways this is correct. Though cutting edge at the time of its invention, the medium's look can be seen as inferior to the Internet, which has largely taken over the role teletext once had.

Having said this, it is noticeable that the BBC Sport service (www.bbc.co.uk/sport ) utilises the same text for both its Ceefax and website broadcasts, meaning there is no difference in content as such here. This outlines an important aspect of the service - just getting across the bare facts is what people want in the world of Internet surfing. People generally don't have the time or patience to read reams of text: if they want to do this they would buy the Times or similar broadsheet or publication.

The first two images in this post are from BBC's Ceefax service in 1975. The first is a promotional postcard displaying the layout of the front page at that time. Note the 70s 'Bauhaus'-style sans serif font. Meanwhile, left is one of the earliest examples of teletext 'art' in the form of a weather map of Britain. As has been previously stated, this design is not all that different from the teletext maps of today - the same visual metaphor has survived for thirty years. This further shows that a simple but effective design can stand the test of time, so to speak.

Right is a screenshot of an experimental version of Ceefax in 1975. This is uniform in colour, pretty much 100% text and can be put on a similar level to ASCII art on the Internet today. Consisting of just thirty pages, the test run was very much a precursor to the visual text-art designs used today on Teletext and to a lesser extent the Internet.

Left is a character map from an Oracle system in 1976, when a series of new characters were added to the set:

"The handful of glyphs which were introduced with the Tifax ROM together with a few others, such as the "£", "$" and "@" signs were specific to the UK Character Set. Later specifications allowed for a further seven international variants so that accented characters and currency symbols could be accommodated."

Links:
http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/Teletext/Photographs.html - Early days of teletext
http://en.wikipedia.org/Teletext - Brief history and technical aspects of teletext

Some useful links for the research project

> http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=386371 - Some technical aspects of the service
> http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/psb_selfasses/psb_self_asses/section4/ - Ofcom's guidelines for the UK service
> http://www.thousandsofcolors.com/2006/01/my_teletext_effort.html - One artist's contribution to the Exploding Television festival
> http://grnews.ncsr.gr/ERT/Teletext_from_ERT/teletext_from_ert.htm - Greek teletext service
> http://joeclark.org/atypi/ATypInotes2003.html - Captioning and subtitling guidelines
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3681174.stm - 30 years of Ceefax

Teletext projects

Tom Moody - Teletext project
Page at eyebeam

This is another example of an artist using the medium of teletext to create art, this time with a message. Solely text based, the image to the right shows a couple of screenshots from the initial MacPaint mockups prior to conversion into teletext format when it would be broadcast as white text on a dark blue background. On a personal level this is quite pleasing, it's almost as if your television is addressing you directly in the form of instruction. For this reason it is quite humorous but there is a (semi) serious message underneath - it attempts to prompt people to reconsider what they are constantly being spoon fed by the media, of an Orwellian Big Brother society that Teletext itself serves to propagate.

Due to a technical glitch the "WE COMMAND. YOU OBEY..." screen accidentally ran on an African American affairs channel and the station got a lot of angry complaints. What, black people don't want authoritarian messages coming from their TVs? Why on earth? Seriously, I'm sorry that happened but it was a kind of an anti-authoritarian (or a-authoritarian) message.

A noteworthy anecdote that underlines what I have previously stated. The piece also enforces Moody's general ethic when creating artwork:

"I'm amused by the lingering rhetoric of futurism--the Buck Rogers, 'machines-will-change-our-lives' spieling--that continues to surround digital production in our society. The computer is a tool, not magic, and possesses its own tragicomic limitations as well as offering new means of expression and communication." -- from http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/contents/

Teletext art

Edwin Van der Heide

In March 2000, artworks for TELETEXT pages on Dutch National Television were made by 5 artists: Edwin van der Heide, JODI, Joost Rekveld, Maki Ueda, and Wlfr. The project was initiated by Edwin van der Heide. Artworks are on air on the TELETEXT page 379 for 2 months.

The page 379 project was a collaborative effort between five artists initiated by Edwin van der Heide in 2000. The artists volunteered to take part in the project that embraced the limited medium of Teletext art - 40 x 23 characters, 80 x 69 pixels, 8 colours and a frame rate of at most 1 image per 5 seconds.

The image to the right, 'Paprika', is an animated gif of a paprika seed that gradually appears a few pixels at a time. Click the image for the full animated GIF. It becomes evident as the image slowly appears that this is perhaps an image of an apple or pepper, it's quite hard to distinguish exactly what the image is without the aid of the title. Eventually the whole of the image becomes visible and is just a filled in version of a paprika-shaped outline. As a piece of art it's quite simple but works quite well within the limitations of the medium. As an experiment it has a certain quality - doesn't necessarily push boundaries but is pleasant to look at nonetheless.

The screenshot to the left (click for full animation) is a part of the animation 'een dag van een eenzame hond' (Roughly 'The Day of A Lonely Dog'), an experiment in form with the image of a dog as a central character:

It is a dot-picture animation about a day of the lonely dog. She is a little, nervous dog. The day starts at 5:00AM. While all the family are out during the daytime, she feels lonely and bored. Then she starts exploring the adventures in the house. In a meantime she gets tired and start taking a nap. What is she dreaming of...?

In many ways this explores more areas of teletext's capabilities than the 'Paprika' piece: a series of separate stills and animations tell the story in pixels rather than words. Things 'move around' on the screen and use is made of many different colours from the teletext palette.

Teletext - research

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/01/teletext_the_or.html - Teletext - early Internet?

http://projects.lektrolab.com/microtel/index.htm - Microtel - 'teletext revived'

An idea for a future project - a Teletext creator in flash. People can submit their own pages to be broadcast on a group text 'station'. A backward progression to the early days of the Internet and its predecessors. I could see the outcome being appealing to retro fans.

This page demonstrates some of the pixel art that once appeared on Dutch teletext service VBI Microtel. This brings in aspects of pop culture and some art has a political message. Other pages are there just for fun. The one shown to the right featuring George W Bush is my personal favourite. Doesn't really serve any particular purpose, it's just a good piece of pixel art.

Sometimes even the scrambled mess caused by poor reception can result in an interesting piece of 'art' in itself. Perhaps a teletext random garbage generator might be an option for the idea stated above?

Cebratext 1.1

http://projects.lektrolab.com/microtel/technical_information.htm

After a bit more digging, found a piece of software similar to the project I mentioned earlier in the post. After a little fiddling, I can't really work it very well - it takes some getting used to. I presume this is very similar to the stuff they actually use to program teletext to be broadcast on TVs. It isn't very user-friendly, however: takes a while to get the hang of things, as may be evident from the screenshot above displaying my lack of progress with the thing.

Teletext on YouTube

Took a look on YouTube to see if there were any examples of Teletext there. Surprised to find there were quite a few. The most interesting was an example of Channel 4's daytime screening of their Teletext service, 4-Tel, from 1986:

4-Tel, 1986
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjfao5MGf3s

The above seems to be a kind of digitised comic strip story involving a chess game. Regular paper-based frames are replaced by a series of hand generated stills which rotate at regular intervals are played through to the sound track of some classical piano music giving it a relaxing, soothing feel, perhaps aiming at the early afternoon television watchers which tend to be older. Personally I think it's cheesy but a lot of things from the 90s do seem slightly outdated today. Teletext, on the other hand, seems to be still going.

In the example above, there is some use of pixel mapping to create text. Since, as default, there are only two sizes on the one font, this is necessary to render larger text with more impact.

This demonstrates a level of pixel art not seen much on the network today: the Internet has taken priority in recent times with its improved graphics and capacity for higher-resolution representations of photographs.

ORF Teletext
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-qVA3CBnN8

ORF is a German version of Teletext. In this 30-second video, the general feel of it, helped generated by a classical guitar soundtrack, is much the same though the items being screened are more information based. Having said this, there are some minimal artistic elements in the titles.

Above is an example of a logo and title used by ORF. Here, pixel rendering is used once more for the larger text, but it seems as if there are two fonts available: a serif and a sans serif one also. The logo is very minimalist and is most likely a primitively digitised version of the network's main professional logo. However it does its job of getting across a certain amount of brand identity.

http://teletext.orf.at/ - Examples of ORF teletext online.

And finally, a parody of Teletext courtesy of Naked News:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-lAm0fCEXs.

This pokes fun at the format, parodying the non-interactive scheduled broadcasts of the service portraying a situation that would never happen in real life. However, there is apparently some decidedly 'dodgy' pixel content in the Swedish version of teletext, so there is an element of truth in this... er, the presenter's head blowing up, that is.

Teletext - ITV Service

Teletext Ltd. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext_Ltd
Mb21.co.uk - http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/TeletextLtd/

Slightly confusingly, ITV's teletext service is called 'Teletext', though it was not the first teletext broadcast: this version started New Year's Day 1993, more than fifteen years after Ceefax began.

From my own experience, this service is more 'fun' than Ceefax, reflecting the brand values of the more modern independent channels it broadcasts on (ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5). This is reflected in the design of the pages, an example of which can be seen above right.

Incidentally, this seems to be from the opening day of broadcast. Characteristically, the service includes a lot more pixel art and little 'drawings' like the small horse rider in the shot to the left. There's less emphasis on clogging screens up with information as well.

In addition, Teletext being commercial, there is the capability to advertise. Colourfully painted adverts adorn the pages of the service. Though a little annoyingly placed on most pages, they are well presented (within the confines of the transmitter, at least). Whilst not exactly cutting edge, the graphics represent the early Internet and its text-heavy nature at the time. This screenshot is from 1995.

Finally, left is a technical page labelled only as a DBI status page. I am sure I will look into the technical side of the Teletext service in a coming post.

Teletext official site:
http://www.teletext.co.uk/

Interestingly, Teletext Holidays is one of the most popular services today's 'post-teletext' age. Perhaps this shows how much of a successful marketing tool Teletext proved. Also, potential customers have the option at their fingertips: they can order the holiday from their own home via Teletext using their telephone - a precursor to Internet communications and processes common today.

Ceefax

Ceefax Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceefax
History of Ceefax - http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/History/ceefax.htm

Ceefax, phonetic for 'See facts', is the BBC's Teletext service. Was the world's first teletext system. Went live in 1974 with thirty pages: compare to the hundreds today. Broadcast programmes (telesoftware) to BBC Micro from 1983 to 1989. Uses World System Teletext standard (was CEPT1).

The name "Teledata" was chosen and a patent application entitled "The Transmission of Alphanumeric Data by Television" was filed on Feb. 9, 1972 under the names of P. Rainger, I. Miller and F. Parker -- iml.jou.ufl.edu/Carlson/History/Ceefax.htm

There are television screenings of the service at set times in the week: these are becoming less common: in fact the BBC stopped the regular service long ago in favour of BBC News 24, whilst ITV ended their 'Nightscreen' transmissions in 2005. They are accompanied by a cheesy easy-listening tune and the pages tick over automatically. Meant for TVs without the Teletext decoder or for people who can't be bothered to lift their hands to get the remote. A screenshot to the left shows a typical screen from the service recorded on Christmas Day 1995. Note the cream background compared to the regular black colour.

The limited set of rolling pages shown on Pages from Ceefax (referred to as a "newsreel") are also accessible at any time of day via Ceefax page 152 (BBC1 or BBC2) on any analogue teletext television. -- en.wikipedia.org/Ceefax

BBC News 24 has seen a reduction in this service in recent times. There is now a television rather than text-based service so this usually screens in the early hours of the morning.

Ceefax on the Internet
http://www.ceefax.tv/

Ceefax.tv is an online version of the Ceefax service which can be accessed by entering the desired number into the Google-style search box much like the TV decoded one. One benefit of this service is that it's much quicker than the television service itself, which has to download to the receiver. A broadband connection is more efficient in handling the data due to its greater technology compatibility.

Preliminary research project

After some deliberation over the subject of my project, I have settled at this point on the televisual interactive interface that is Teletext. More specifically than this I have not decided as yet, but have identified the following ideas for areas of research:

> Relationship with modern technology. How Teletext became a precursor to the Internet as we know it today.
> Teletext today - BBCi, press the red button etc. Digital age of Teletext - will it die out as the analogue receivers are switched off one by one? Also, Teletext online.
> Influence on many aspects of the Internet - user correspondence, real-time up to date news, television listings, advertising - all prominent on the web today.
> Pixel art transmitted via Teletext. Relationship with ASCII art.
> Having fun. The reveal function to answer questions in your own time, or at least until the page ticks over. Bamboozle style text-based quiz games. Children's reveal area/guessing puzzles.
> Subtitles - accessibility. A precursor to audio description.

I will post some visuals based on this tomorrow and continue to do so for the next week or so.