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Appreciation post: that one weird gallery in Portland that only uses CRT monitors
I went to this little digital art spot off Belmont last month called something like Pixel Vault, and I gotta say I totally disagreed with the online hype about it being amateur hour. Everyone in the forums kept saying using old CRT screens for digital display was a gimmick that ruined the work, but I think they missed the whole point. I stood there looking at this glitchy landscape piece on a beat-up 1998 Sony Trinitron, and the scanlines actually gave the colors this depth you just don't get on a flat panel. The artist even told me they designed the piece specifically for that 640x480 resolution, and seeing it any other way would be like hearing a vinyl record through phone speakers. I get that not every piece works on a CRT, but for pixel art and early 3D stuff it feels more honest somehow. Has anyone else visited a gallery that uses weird hardware and come away feeling like the critics were wrong?
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olivia_chen3525d ago
Oh yeah, "amateur hour" - because nothing says amateur like designing a piece specifically for a 25 year old display tech and getting it to actually look good. I swear half those critics probably just saw "CRT" and assumed it was some hipster art school project without even walking in the door. The scanlines thing is real though, that weird nostalgic fuzz adds a layer that no OLED can fake.
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