Magnetic CRT Distortion
Warped television pictures made by holding a magnet against a cathode-ray tube. Nam June Paik turned the trick into gallery art in the mid-1960s, bending broadcast images into swirling abstract shapes on ordinary TV sets.
Spot it
- 01Bent, swirling scan geometry
- 02Color fringes and smears
- 03Glowing phosphor scanlines
Why it happens
A magnetic field deflects the electron beam inside the tube, so the beam lands in the wrong place on the phosphor screen and the picture bends, smears and shifts color.
Recreate it in Pixio
Image edit prompt“Re-render this image as a television screen distorted by a strong magnet: the picture twists into a curved vortex around one side, with stretched scanlines, red and blue color separation, glowing phosphor texture, a rounded glass screen and soft bloom at the edges. Dark bezel visible. Keep the original subject and composition identifiable.”
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