"A Parallel Image": a novel way of transmitting a video signal

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Friday, December 4th, 2009


What you’re looking at is an installation by Gebhard Sengmüller called “A Parallel Image.” Technically, it’s art, but it’s more of an interesting deconstruction of technology than anything else. Instead of transmitting a video signal digitally via HDMI or VGA, this contraption does it in analog: 2500 photoconductors in an array, individually wired to 2500 bulbs on the other side. The result is that anything shone on one side appears on the other by a simple and entirely physical process.

a_parallel_image_07

It’s ridiculously inefficient in one way, yet almost as elegant as possible in another. And as you can imagine, it’s not very high resolution. 2500=50 x 50, so it’s got about the same amount of pixels as an area the size of a quarter on whatever screen you’re reading this on. Not something I’d want to read blogs with, but it does transmit that projector image pretty well.

[via Hack a Day]

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