Digital TV Dinner by Jamie Fenton and Raul Zaritsky

This may be one of the most under-appreciated works in media art history. It's one of the first instances of video game art, normally dated to the '90s by institutions like Rhizome. Yet, here in 1978, Jamie Fenton and Raul Zaritsky were distressing video game consoles to make art. So let's rightly place it in that bucket of art history, a bucket growing in importance by the day, by the way.

Then, it's also widely recognized and cited as one of the first glitch videos; it was shown again in Chicago New Media 1973–1992 in 2018, noted as a work of glitch art not as a work of video game art. So we're talking about one of the practically pre-historical works of video game art, by an absolute legend in Fenton, as well as its cemented place in glitch art history. That makes this piece and Fenton pretty important I'd say.

Fenton and Zaritsky made the three-minute video Digital TV Dinner for the legendary EVL's (oft mentioned in this timeline) Electronic Visualization Event 3 in Chicago.

How are we pretty sure about Fenton's place as one of the earliest video game artists ever? Because she was the lead programmer on the Bally Astrocade home game console, which she used for this work. They made its images by ejecting the game cartridge from the running machine and striking the console, which broke the picture into bursts of color and pattern. They recorded the results on video with Dick Ainsworth making the music.

A second version of the famed piece aired on WTTW Chicago in 1979.