Digital Video Effect. The Foundation of the Visual Imaginary in Italian Television in the 1980s

The article proposes some reflections on the status of Italian television during 1980s, a key period related to the transition from analogue to digital imaging. A passage marked by events, broadcasts, personalities and technologies that have been at the origin of computer divulgation that in Italy has been conducted also thanks to the contribution of public and private television. The ways and timing of this transition have been analyzed considering some fundamental steps that the progress of information technology took in the 1980s, even within the television studios. If it is true that the introduction of graphic workstations radically expanded the graphic possibilities of TV directors, it is equally true that since the first television broadcasts, "traditional" visual arts have given a strong contribution to the aesthetics and contents of Italian television. Within this context, there are not many studies that have investigated the function, operated by television, of bringing out the role that information technologies have had in the construction of a new visual imaginary. In order to begin this analysis, we have analyzed, on the one hand, the programs, including radio ones, that have seen the electronic/digital language interact with the television one, and on the other hand, some incursions into television programming by personalities already known for having investigated experimental forms of hybridization between TV, art and computers.