Long before cable providers allowed one to zip through TV programing in multiple languages, time zones, and genres with computer-like remotes there was Teletext. Developed in the early 70s, the service was likely the first experience many had actively interacting with technology. Type in a few numbers on the menu displayed on your TV screen and you could retrieve news headlines, the weather, sports, and program schedules on demand. Now nearly obsolete in most markets — CNN canceled their support of the service in 2006, with the BBC following in 2012 — the service lingers on in countries on the Continent where analogue cable continues to constitute a relatively high percentage of viewership.

Teletext’s retro appeal of jagged letters and highly-saturated has attracted a growing number of artists to move it out of the functional realm and take up the service as a medium for their work. Principle among them is the FixC cooperative, a group of six Helsinki-based artists focused on new media, whose engagement with Teletext started out as a joke. “We were discussing ways to show animations to a new audience. Someone mentioned Teletext and after first having a good laugh we started to realize that it could actually be a very interesting platform,” Juha van Ingen tells BLOUIN ARTINFO. “We contacted The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE and they gave us a chance to try it out.”

The opportunity led to the first ever International Teletext Art Festival, broadcast last year on YLE and later picked up by German broadcaster ARD. That second iteration brought over half a million viewers during its one month run last August, leading the group to initiate a third edition of the festival in 2013. Through September 15th works by FixC members and collaborators Cordula Ditz, Dan Farrimond, Daniel Egg, Dragan Espenschied, Goto80, Jarkko Räsänen, John Lawrence, Juha van Ingen, Kathrin Günter, LIA, Manuel Knapp, Marc Lee, Max Capacity, Raquel Meyers, Seppo Renvall, and Übermorgen will flick accross screens in Germany and with partners in Switzerland (Swiss Text) and Austria (ORF) as well as through the providers’ online outlets.

However, Van Ingen cautions against the festival being seen as simply medium-oriented: “Though we see Teletext as a great platform for presenting art, for us it is a part of the bigger picture: art comes first. We have tried to maintain a broad range of artistic expression in the project and the discourses are very much in the hands of the individual artists."

They have also teamed up with Berlin project space Pfleuger68 to show the works, which do indeed span a wide range from pixelated mug shots and retro-looking monkey and alien animations to compositions that more closely resemble abstract painting. Admittedly, with the latter grouping, Teletext’s large pixels do limit possibilities considerably, a facet that van Ingen suggests actually increases the medium’s appeal: “I think the success of ITAF is very much about our times. HD has event reached supermarkets, and the race towards crisp images has slowed down.” Meanwhile, he says, “fascination with lo-fi aesthetics is booming and can be seen everywhere: street wear, fashion, websites and art.”

A looming question remains, however: can Teletext-based art exist without Teletext? As analogue TV slips further and further into the red, the medium itself might be set for early extinction.