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About this online exhibition

What methods were used to restore the Telidon artworks in this exhibition?

Working from a collection of digital files saved from restored floppy disks, John Durno headed the restoration process of Telidon artworks for this exhibition. Using a rare first-generation Telidon decoder and the last remaining copy of MVDI software from Microstar, Durno was able to display images and enable interaction with NAPLPS. Luck is a key part of this process, as many soft and hardwares required for the restoration were saved in back rooms by artist-run centres, grassroots collectives, and publicly-funded organizations, despite their widespread disappearance from commercial spheres.

Where did the artworks in the exhibition come from?

In 2018, while working as the Programming Coordinator at InterAccess Shauna Jean Doherty was helping to reshelve the organization’s archive after the centre had moved locations from Ossington Avenue to Dupont Street. During this process she found several boxes labelled “Telidon” which contained floppy disks with artworks on them. This is where the majority of the artworks in this digital exhibition have been drawn from. Additional materials have been sourced from the University of Victoria Archives, Vtape, the personal archive of Paul Petro, and the library at the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

Who is involved in this online exhibition project?

This project has had many contributors since its origins in 2018 including artists, researchers, translators, coordinators, technicians, and community partners. For the list of collaborators as of the exhibition’s launch please visit the Credits page. The exhibition is funded by Digital Museums Canada and is hosted by InterAccess, with administrative support from its staff. The individuals responsible for applying for the funding that supports this exhibition were Shauna Jean Doherty, John Durno, Bill Perry, and Susan Kordelewski.

About InterAccess

Where is InterAccess located?

Since 1983, InterAccess has rented exhibition and studio space throughout Toronto, primarily in the Queen Street West neighbourhood. Currently, InterAccess is located at 950 Dupont Street, near Ossington Avenue in Toronto. IA includes a new media studio for production as well as education and gallery space for exhibition.

What is InterAccess like now?

InterAccess continues to support artists, curators, and cultural workers at the edges of new media and emerging practices through studio access, workshops, and exhibition opportunities. Through education and programming, IA works toward widespread and culturally resonant art which, critically engages technology.

What is the connection between InterAccess and Telidon?

When videotex artist, Bill Perry, impressed Bell Canada with his Telidon graphics they loaned him a Telidon Information Provider System, to make more graphics. Perry located the computer at Trinity Square Video (TSV), to establish a project entitled "Telidon at Trinity Square Video", with Ric Amis. The intent was to provide TSV video artists with access to the technology through a series of workshops. The project was so successful it became a new artist-run organization like Trinity, devoted to videotex, called Toronto Community Videotex (TCV), which was later renamed InterAccess (IA). TCV was founded by Bill Perry, Nina Beveridge, Geoffery Shea, and Paul Petro, all artists experimenting with Telidon.

About Telidon technology

What made Telidon special when it was invented?

Although Telidon graphics seem crude to us now, they were considered to be quite advanced compared to the chunky bitmapped graphics characteristic of competing videotex services such as France's Minitel. The tradeoff was that Telidon graphics required more computing power to render, boosting the costs of Telidon hardware beyond what the market could readily support.

Was there anything similar to Telidon in other countries?

Videotex systems like Telidon were for a time the focus of much international interest. Many countries developed videotex capability, including the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, and South Africa, with varying degrees of success. The most successful was the French system, Minitel, which lasted until 2012. Minitel was also successfully deployed in Brazil under the name Teletexto.

Why was France’s Minitel system successful and yet Telidon was not?

Early videotex services had a bootstrapping problem: few people were willing to purchase expensive decoder boxes and terminals before videotex content and services were available in sufficient quantity and quality to make it worthwhile, while at the same time content providers were unwilling to create substantial amounts of content until a market for it existed. France circumvented this problem by giving away Minitel terminals to telephone subscribers, creating a large, ready-made videotex marketplace through public funding.

When did Telidon stop being used?

Government support for the Telidon project ended on March 31, 1985, and the various commercial services based on it closed shortly thereafter.

Why didn't Telidon find the success that had been predicted?

Telidon technology was challenged by its lack of content and its equipment, both its expense and production. Manufacturers didn't want to produce Telidon equipment without a variety of applications to give it mass appeal. Telidon information creators were, at the same time, reluctant to spend large sums on development without a guaranteed audience. Ultimately, the technology did not gain a large enough audience, quickly enough, to sustain it and guarantee its success.

Why do Telidon graphics “load” sequentially?

The slow, sequential rendering of Telidon graphics is entirely due to the limitations of 1980s computing hardware and network bandwidth. The architects of Telidon fully anticipated that rendering would speed up dramatically as the technologies matured.

Who created the content that could be accessed using Telidon?

The material stored in the computer's memory was to be provided by information suppliers such as news gathering organizations, governments, financial institutions, publishing houses, retail outlets, and individual entrepreneurs operating from their homes or offices.

How was Telidon information retrieved from its databases?

To retrieve information on a subject of interest, in either text or graphic form, a customer would turn on their modified television set and switch to the Telidon service. Users could consult a general index on the screen and select a subject area by pushing a number on a handheld keypad (resembling a calculator) linked to the Telidon terminal. The user would narrow their selection step by step by choosing a number from each successive page to get more and more detailed information.

How were Telidon images stored?

Images were stored as pages in a database. One page could be displayed on the screen at one time. Each page had its own reference number, or address. The artworks showcased in this exhibition were found stored on 5.25 inch and 8 inch floppy disks.

How was Telidon different from video?

Telidon was mostly intended as a still image format. However, Telidon graphics rendered slowly and sequentially due to the limited processing speed and network bandwidth of early 1980s computing hardware. Artists took advantage of these limitations to create simple animation effects by drawing and redrawing the same shapes in different positions, so the shapes would appear to move as the image rendered.

How were Telidon pages “linked” together?

The “links” between pages were stored as entries in the same database that stored the images. There were no links within Telidon pages themselves, as there are in web pages. Restoring the artworks required reconstructing their underlying database in addition to recovering their pages.

How was Telidon different from the internet?

Unlike the Internet, Telidon maintained a clear distinction between content providers and content consumers. Content providers were expected to be well-funded public and private organizations that could afford the substantial cost of the computing systems required to create and deliver Telidon information, while content consumers were expected to interact with the systems in limited, pre-defined ways. Toronto Community Videotex subverted these expectations by providing artists with the tools required to create works not beholden to any corporate or government agenda.

What is teletext?

A forerunner of videotex, generically termed teletext, began operating in England in 1974. Two broadcast teletext services (Oracle and Ceefax) gave British viewers ready access to news, weather, community entertainment guides, and other general interest topics. Viewers who had the special decoding equipment could select from more than 100 pages of material which were broadcast in a continuous loop on a normally unused portion of the television signal. This material contained text only.

What is videotex?

Videotex was a two-way communication system that linked television sets to computers and information databases. As Telidon was being developed it was imagined that videotex adaptors would be attached to or built into home TV sets, turning them into computer terminals, which would draw a variety of information services from the electronic memory of other computers. Users would be able to obtain information from the system and also send information back.

Where was Telidon used?

Telidon services were meant to be used in homes and offices. The technology never gained widespread commercial success though experimental Telidon terminals were set up across Canada and, on a smaller scale, in the United States in the early 1980s.

What was Telidon supposed to be used for?

Telidon was meant to revolutionize information transmission, bringing data straight to the homes of Canadians, before the Internet. It was designed to allow users to retrieve information from a central information bank via telephone lines.The initiative was intended to bridge government research and development and private industry, offering a range of services that we now consider commonplace for the World Wide Web, including home banking, university courses, weather reports, and shopping.

What was the Canadian government’s role in the development of Telidon?

Research and development on Telidon began in 1969 through the Department of Communications (DOC) and Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC). Working with Norpak Ltd., an Ontario-based data transmission company, development toward a colour display technology began. This would grow to become Telidon hardware, which kicked off with a 4-year development program in 1978.

About Telidon and artists

What colours could Telidon produce?

Black and white, six shades of grey, and eight basic colours, or both, could be used to compose a Telidon image.

What shapes could Telidon produce?

Telidon images were composed of geometric shapes including points, lines, rectangles, polygons, and arcs.

How did artists learn about Telidon?

In 1980, one of the first Telidon artworks, "Graphic Variations on Telidon," was created by Pierre Moretti with support from the National Film Board of Canada. A year later, access to the technology within artist communities increased as Telidon at Trinity Square Video (TSV) was launched, providing artists with the opportunity to experiment with a terminal on loan to Bill Perry from Bell Canada. Bill Perry and Ric Amis taught workshops at TSV. As artist interest grew, Nina Beveridge, Paul Petro, Bill Perry, and Geoffrey Shea established Toronto Community Videotex, later InterAccess, which further spread access to the technology for artists.

How did artists use Telidon technology in the 1980s?

Telidon provided one of the earliest means for the creation of digital art by Canadian artists. Users experimented with the animated video and interactive videotex possibilities of Telidon, which they gained access to via workshops. Artists more interested in video art used it to generate computer graphics for their video work while others created interactive work to be uploaded to one of the experimental databases. Because Telidon technology lost government support and funding during its experimentation phase, most Telidon artworks have never been seen, let alone exhibited.