About VHS Glitch Tape
VHS Glitch Tape is the look of a degraded videotape playing back on a CRT: a near-black raster broken by horizontal scanlines, snow noise, and chroma bleed, with the SMPTE color-bar test screen as its signature artifact. The black floor of the tube glows faintly rather than reading as pure ink.
Tracking errors smear hot magenta-pink and cyan across the frame; saturated 75% color-bar hues sit over a glowing CRT black. The aesthetic declares that the signal is decaying, the medium is visible, and the static is part of the picture.
- Origin
- North America (NTSC home-video and broadcast television culture)
- Era
- 1980s–early 1990s (VHS / NTSC CRT era); revived c. 2010s by vaporwave & glitch art
- Key figures
- JVC (VHS format) · SMPTE (color-bar standard) · Norm Hoffman (vaporwave revival)
- Movements
- Analog-media nostalgia · Glitch art · Vaporwave · Hauntology
VHS Glitch Tape design spec
Colors
Typography
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