During the 2000s, multimedia artists – particularly those from the online chiptune music community – began to experiment with and embrace the medium of teletext.
As high speed internet became more widespread, artists in different countries shared tools and techniques for creating in the format, and a community based around teletext art started to form. This would lead to exhibitions being staged in galleries and on public teletext services across Europe.
It all began in April and May of 2000, when Dutch service NOS hosted a teletext art project initiated by sound artist Edwin van der Heide. He and JODI, Joost Rekveld, Maki Ueda and Wlfr created a total of eight animations to be broadcast with a sub-page interval of about five seconds.
”Teletext. Maximum 40 x 23 characters, 78 x 69 pixels, 8 colors, approximately 1 frame per 5 seconds… it doesn’t sound exactly like the latest standard in multimedia. Nevertheless, this wonderful medium is still very popular today.
“Five artists from various disciplines voluntarily restricted themselves inspired by teletext. In honor of the twentieth anniversary of NOS Teletekst they surprisingly made work from very different perspectives.”
–Exhibition description on NOS
Japanese artist Maki Ueda made two stylistically different animations for the exhibition. Pepper gradually revealed cross sections of the fruit, while A Day With A Lonely Dog was an expansive story spanning many more frames, depicting an anxious dog who begins to dream about riding a dragon and being eaten by a large fish.
“Een dag van een eenzame hond” (A Day with A Lonely Dog)
maki uedaIt is a dot-picture animation about a day of the lonely dog. She is a little, nervous dog. The day starts at 5:00AM. While all the families are out during the daytime, she feels lonely and boaring. Then she starts exploring the adventures in the house. In a meantime she gets tired and start taking a nap. What is she dreaming of…?
–Maki Ueda
Prolific Net.art duo and teletext glitch artists JODI would contribute two works, while organiser Van der Heide himself also created two pieces. One of these, SYM 1 to SYM 9, included a scrolling animation of blue pixel clouds that resembled Rorschach patterns.
Sources
- Edwin van der Heide: Teletext Art Project
- Maki Ueda: Teletext (Archived from the original), accessed 4 March 2026
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