Category: Newsletter

Fall Break Approaches…

Hello all! 

We hope you’ve been having a good week and are staying safe and warm. We don’t have any major announcements but would like to inform you that during fall break the lab will likely not be open to visitors. Additionally, there will not be a newsletter sent next week, but the following Monday we should be back and ready to roll.

Thanksgiving Break Hours 

During the break, we will be keeping the lab closed to visitors.  

Demo of the Week 

This week, we will be demoing Bugdom on the iMac G3 SE Indigo, 

And High Rollers on the Apple //c. 

Object of the Week 

Our featured object this week is Nintendo’s Famicom. 

The Famicon, the shortened nickname given to the Nintendo Family Computer and more famously known in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System (aka the NES), was one of Nintendo’s first video game consoles. 

However, as you might notice, the Famicon is strikingly different in appearance from the NES. Despite being the same console as the NES, it has a completely different design. Why is that?  During the Famicon’s initial release in Japan, the video game industry in the US was actually undergoing a massive recession. 

This Wikipedia article and this article have more information, but during 1983, the US video game market was severely struggling. There were too many video game consoles on the market and most of the games for them were awful. Additionally, while this was happening, the Famicon was not meeting immediate success in Japan; its launch was riddled with a few critical issues, and so it had to be recalled and revised before it started meeting demand. As a result of both of these things, initially, Nintendo did not plan to release the Famicon to American audiences at all. However, after the Famicon’s technical issues were resolved and it became a hit in Japan, Nintendo started slowly releasing versions of it in American arcades and, seeing its success there, started thinking once more of a US release. They eventually decided to release a completely re-designed version of the Famicon as the NES, to smashing success.

Movie Screening of the Month 

Our upcoming screening will be on December 7^th at 7pm. We will be screening Rock & Rule, directed by Clive A. Smith! 

Come join us and watch a classic film as it would’ve been seen during the 90s! 

Lab Hours and Room Number 

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are: 

Tuesday: 10:00am-5:00pm 

Wednesday: 2:00pm-6:00pm 

Thursday: 10:00am-4:00pm 

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week. 

Sincerely, 

The Media Archeology Lab 

The University of Texas at Dallas 

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We hope you all are enjoying the cooler weather this week! We are having a more relaxed week at the lab after Halloween, so there is nothing major to announce on our end. 

Demo of the Week 

We have two demos this week! 

The Grape iMac G3 will be running Microsoft Office applications from the year 2001, 

and the Strawberry iMac SE will be running the video game Nanosaur. 

Drop by the lab to mess around with either of these applications! 

Object of the Week 

Our object this week is the TR-005 Television! 

Every decade or so a new technological breakthrough will come up, one that often fascinates our collective imagination. The year 1961 launched one of these collective dreams, one in which humanity could break through the outermost layers of our stratosphere and have human bodies (as well as dogs and monkeys), whimsically facing the lack of our planet’s gravitational pull. That was the one of the very first milestones in the space race, which culminated in the Apollo 11 moon landing in July of 1969. 

Human fascination with space rocket technology then filled our collective imagination and spread out to consumer goods as the aesthetics of Space Age futurism were designed into household appliances, architecture, and cars in order to create the impression of technological advancement. Panasonic was one of the many companies that took advantage of this aesthetic. 

In 1966, Panasonic launched the TR-005, also known as the Orbitel. A five-inch CRT screen encased by two silver plastic hemispheres, the Orbitel was designed to look Space Age, resembling an astronaut helmet or an alien spaceship. It was built using cutting edge “solid state” technology, which meant that its futuristic case was filled with circuit boards instead of the more, at the time, common nixie/vacuum tubes. In its ads, Panasonic would boast that the TV would not need to be “warmed up” before a bright, greyscale, clear image would form on its CRT screen. 

While not currently located in our lab, you can still view this dreamy television set sitting proudly in one of our display cabinets at the ATEC building. 

Movie Screening of the Month 

Our upcoming screening will be on December 7^th at 7pm. The film we will be screening has yet to be decided, but closer to the date we will let you know what we will be watching. 

Lab Hours and Room Number 

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are: 

Tuesday: 10:00am-5:00pm 

Wednesday: 2:00pm-6:00pm 

Thursday: 10:00am-4:00pm 

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week. 

Sincerely, 

The Media Archeology Lab 

The University of Texas at Dallas 

Happy Halloween! 

We hope you have all been doing well! We have two upcoming events this week—two screenings of classic horror films! 

Halloween Screening! 

To celebrate this Halloween, tomorrow at 12pm we’ll be watching Vampyr by Carl Theodor Dreyer. 😈 

As always with our screenings, come down to ATEC 1.705 to watch it with us! 

Movie Screening of the Month 

The first Thursday of each month, we screen a classic film from our laserdisc collection. This Thursday, at 7pm on November 2^nd, we will be screening Mad Monster Party.  

Demo of the Week 

Our first demo of the week is KidPix Studio Deluxe, which will be run on the Tangerine iMac G3 SE! 

This is an art program similar to Microsoft Paint. It was a staple of early 2000s school computers so some of you may actually remember messing around on this program. Whether you are familiar with it or not, it is an interesting experience, and we invite you to visit us and mess around with it. 

We will also be running Apple — Getting Down to Basic on the Apple //c.  

This is a beginner friendly introduction to one of the oldest families of programming languages, BASIC, which was originally designed in 1963. The branch of BASIC the Apple //c uses may be over 40 years old, but you will find many of the same programming concepts used today present in this archaic program. 

Object of the Week 

Our object of the week this week is the Oscilloscope. 

An oscilloscope is an instrument that graphically displays voltage electrical signals and shows how those signals change over time. It measures these signals by connecting with a sensor, which is a device that creates an electrical signal in response to physical stimuli like sound, light, and heat. For instance, a microphone is a sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. They are often used when designing, manufacturing, or repairing electronic equipment. Engineers use an oscilloscope to measure electrical phenomena and solve measurement challenges quickly and accurately to verify their designs or confirm that a sensor is working properly. 

Here at the lab, we use older CRT versions of the devices to display music in ways not often seen before. Oscilloscope Music is audiovisual music, where the visuals are drawn by the sound. In order to get the closest possible correlation between image and sound, the exact same signal that is connected to the left and right speakers is also connected to an analog oscilloscope’s X and Y inputs, producing complex Lissajous images. For the past 10 years, Jerobeam Fenderson and Hansi3D have been creating Oscilloscope Music and techniques in the largely uncharted field of audiovisual music. You can find more about Oscilloscope Music here. 

If you’re interested in the Oscilloscope in particular, come to the lab and ask for Kyle. Several of our researchers also generally know how to turn it on and focus it, so if you simply want it on, feel free to ask! 

Lab Hours and Room Number 

We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are: 

Tuesday: 10:00am-5:00pm 

Wednesday: 2:00pm-6:00pm 

Thursday: 10:00am-4:00pm 

Thank you for reading our newsletter! We wish you a happy Halloween as well as some scary good luck with your exams! 😊  

Sincerely, 

The Media Archeology Lab 

The University of Texas at Dallas