March 14, 1998
Harwood Art Center
(Keif Henley)

Keif: This was when there was the novelty of artists taking over Pixelvision cameras. 

The genius of it is that it would just take a cassette, a regular cassette that you could play in your car, and it would translate somehow to video, and it was very low-res and choppy. So it had its own look. I guess it was a little bit of a problem for Fisher-Price when artists started calling them up going  “Hey, how do you do this? Can we do this?”  They’re like, “Hey, it’s made for kids, man. Come on.”  But then I think they capitalized on the fact that artists wanted them. 

Bryan: I remember when I got mine. They were only available for a couple of years, and less popular with kids this one particular Christmas when color VHS camcorders came out. So all the kids were like, screw this Pixelvision, black and white chunky choppy look, I want a camcorder. And so suddenly they were all available. A bunch of them were available in Pennysaver magazines. You’d call and some 12 year old kid with a cracking voice would say, sure, I’ll sell it to you for cheap, but you gotta get here before my mom comes home. And, um, that’s how I got mine.