I recently built an analog video dirty mixer — a device that intentionally corrupts and glitches video signals to create unpredictable and aesthetically interesting visual effects. After finding , I decided to build my own version to experiment with analog video manipulation.

I recently built a dirty video mixer — a simple but effective device that intentionally corrupts and glitches video signals to create unpredictable and aesthetically interesting visual effects. The beauty of this device lies in its simplicity: just one potentiometer, two switches, two inputs, and one output (see instructions here).

The dirty mixer works by imperfectly combining video signals, creating glitches precisely because it’s not doing the job of mixing properly. In my setup, I mixed two contrasting sources: a digital HDMI signal from my laptop and an analog source from a Lion King VHS tape, with the output displayed on an analog TV. The results were interesting — distorted colors, images that shifted position, horizontal stripe glitches, and various other visual artifacts.

What I find fascinating about the dirty mixer is how it transforms video signals into something unpredictable and aesthetically rich. I noticed that it primarily affected the analog VHS signal, creating effects that would be difficult to replicate with digital filters. The experiment would likely work even better with two analog inputs, but the digital/analog combination still produced cool results.