ORF TELETEXT meets art

FixC cooperative collaborates with 

ORF TELETEXT and ARD Text in:

ORF TELETEXT meets art, ARD Text meets art

Short, up-to-date news on politics, economy, the latest sports results, or weather forecasts as well as today’s television programme – these are the most important topics that are usually associated with teletext. But the medium, often referred to as the predecessor of the Internet and ridiculed by many as “out”, but still used daily by millions of people, can do more.

The teletext exhibition “ORF TELETEXT meets art” resp. “ARD Text meets art”, a cooperation between ORF TELETEXT, ARD Text and the artists’ cooperative FixC, will be shown from August 29th to September 19th 2019 in ORF TELETEXT (from page 840) and in ARD Text (from page 800), presents artworks from 13 international artists specifically created for the Teletext medium. The works of Nadine Arbeiter (Germany), Cordula Ditz (Germany), Daniel Egg (Austria), Dan Farrimond (Great Britain), Juha van Ingen (Finland), Joey Holder (Great Britain), Kathrin Günter (Germany), Raquel Meyers (Spain), Matthias Moos (Switzerland), Niccolò Moronato (Italy), Jarkko Räsänen (Finland), Seppo Renvall (Finland) and UBERMORGEN (Austria, Switzerland/USA) show a wide variety of different approaches and implementations for teletext art.

> View works

Additionally, during this year’s Ars Electronica Festival Out of the Box – the Midlife Crisis of the Digital Revolution, Linz, 5.9.-9.9.2019, teletext art will be presented: At the teletext hackathon in POSTCITY on Wednesday, September 5th, five of the participating artists will be creating live teletext art, and the public is also cordially invited to get creative on site with teletext software. The resulting artworks can be published and admired in ORF TELETEXT immediately. On Thursday, September 6th, the teletext art exhibition “ORF TELETEXT meets Art” will be shown in the Deep Space of the Ars Electronica Center on the 16 x 9 m screen.
Teletext was originally launched by the BBC in 1974 (known as Ceefax), ORF and ARD started to offer Teletext in 1980, technically it is almost unchanged since then. A teletext page can be perceived as a grid of 24 rows and 40 columns. Each part of the grid can be used for a letter, a number, a special character, a control character or up to six graphic pixels. To change the colours of the graphics, text and background or to add a blink effect, a control character needs to be inserted. Each time a control character is placed it uses up one space in the grid, which then appears black. And you only have six colours, black and white. 
The success of the teletext medium, which has also been available on the Internet and as an app for many years, is due, among other things, to its simplicity of use, its high technical distribution and, of course, its actual content.

Information about the teletext exhibition “ORF TELETEXT meets art” resp. “ARD Text meets art” as well as all participating artists and the former teletext art exhibitions ITAF are also available online on the website of the artists’ cooperative FixC, www.teletextart.com.

ORF TELETEXT meets art, ARD Text meets art, 29.8.-19.9.2019
ORF TELETEXT from page 840
ARD Text from page 840
Ars Electronica: Teletext Hackathon, POSTCITY 05.09.2019, 02:00-05:00 p.m.
ORF TELETEXT meets art, Ars Electronica Center, Deep Space, 06.09.2019, 03:30-04:00 p.m.

All images on the website are copyright of the artists.