Teletect RamBend

Circuit bending is the practice of rewiring consumer electronics to make them misbehave creatively. In video, the classic target is a frame-store or effects chip: shorting its address lines, clock or data bus scrambles the picture it holds. RamBend reproduces those bends (address, clock and data) digitally, on a RAM buffer inside Videomancer’s FPGA.

Route, Clock and Data are grouped patch selectors, not smooth effect-amount controls. Each starts with an off region of about 4%. Beyond that, the sweep passes through eight families of related connections, each taking about an eighth of the travel. Small movements within a family explore related patterns; crossing into the next family can change the kind of bend. The boundaries are slightly sticky, and connections change between lines rather than mid-line, so a setting is easy to find and keep.

The most advanced active setting among Route, Clock and Data also sets how overloaded brightness and color behave:

These behaviors are introduced across the picture in a fixed spatial pattern, not all at once. They are most apparent with Drive above halfway or Chroma above normal color. Higher does not always mean stronger: a new connection can give a different repetition, color relationship or feedback balance.

Route changes the memory positions RamBend reads from. It can make several parts of a line read the same material, reorder neighboring details and confine reads to a small repeating window. It is a memory-address effect, not a horizontal-position control.

With Write Route on Patched, Route also redirects where new material is written. For a readable starting point, try Route around 8–20% with Clock and Data at zero, modest Drive and Raster writing.

Data changes the brightness and color information fetched from memory: what is read, rather than where. Low settings alter fine detail (stepped edges, subtle corruption). Middle settings force tonal changes and coarser detail. High settings combine strong value changes with reduced tonal resolution and patterns derived from memory position: flat colors, dense textures and strongly outlined sections. Drive and Regenerate feed the corrupted material back into memory, and Chroma amplifies its color changes. Data is not a hue control; its colors come from corrupting the memory return.

Clock decides whether the read position advances or stays put. When it stays put, successive output pixels fetch the same material, giving stutter, stretched detail, horizontal repeats and stalled-looking sections. Low settings give light, sparse stalls; middle settings regular read/hold rhythms; high settings long stalls that can last nearly a whole line, including picture-dependent behavior. Each line still starts from a fresh read position, and the external video clock and sync are never affected.

Clock repeats a fetched sample; Hold (Pot 6) protects a region of samples from being overwritten. Long, uninterrupted Clock stalls can also enlarge Hold (see below).

Drive strengthens the brightness feedback and shapes the returned tones. It is a feedback and distortion control, not an exposure control.

Drive doesn’t add a black pedestal, and it always keeps at least half the brightness entering its stage. If the picture gets too dense, lower Drive or Wet. For persistence without strong wrapping, keep Drive below halfway.

Chroma controls desaturation, color gain, cross-color warping and color feedback. Its neutral point is low on the sweep:

If Wet is below 100%, the original colors still show through even with Chroma at zero.

Pot 6 edits two separately saved values, selected by Pot 6 Page (Switch 11): Hold and Threshold.

Raster writes new material in normal picture order, so Route only bends reads. Patched applies the active Route connection to writes too: different incoming positions can target the same stored locations while others are starved of updates, so the image becomes more self-reinforcing or fragmented. With Route off, Patched has no effect of its own.

Control lets the bends and Hold run freely across the whole picture. Use it to explore and to learn what each knob does. Content uses Threshold to decide which incoming sections engage Route, Clock, Data and Hold, so the source’s own brightness switches the effects in and out. Drive and Chroma are never switched off by the key.

Held regions are refreshed in the background, out of sight. Feed refreshes them with fresh input, so protected blocks keep receiving new source material. Regenerate refreshes them with the processed memory result, so Drive, Chroma and Data keep reworking the held texture and changes accumulate. The switch only affects held regions: with no Hold active it changes nothing.

Rewrite allows ordinary memory updates. Hold adds write inhibition tied to the active Clock pattern, so some memory locations keep older material. This makes Clock patches feel more persistent or locked. It is separate from Pot 6 Hold, and has no effect when Clock is inactive.

Selects whether Pot 6 edits Hold or Threshold. Changing pages doesn’t reset the other value.

Wet blends the original and processed pictures at the output. At 0% the output is the exact original input. The feedback loop runs before this blend, so lowering Wet doesn’t stop, slow or clear the memory: the texture keeps evolving while hidden, and raising Wet again reveals what developed. Use it to reveal and conceal a prepared memory state, or to lay readable live detail over a heavily bent return.

Fine monochrome tracking tears, with a small retained footprint and some dry picture.

Natural-color retained edge blocks, from address inversion with raster writes.

Patched writes and Regenerate pull color into vertical combs.

Coarse clock-held bands, warm color and a hidden live Feed refresh.

Fine bright magenta and green edge damage with smaller held regions.

Monochrome processed-memory trails and horizontal ghost fragments.

Large multicolor retained steps and blocks at stronger Drive.

Each preset compared with Hold at zero, with a bright-region Threshold history, and in HD. Every effect preset changes visibly when Hold is removed.

Presets don’t store the contents of memory or both Pot 6 pages. After loading a preset from the Threshold page, move Pot 6 slightly on the Hold page to pick up the preset’s Hold value. A saved Threshold right of center makes Hold select bright regions; at or left of center it selects dark regions.

For brightness-keyed variations of any preset: set Threshold to about 25% (dark) or 75% (bright), return to the Hold page and restore the Hold value, then select Content. Switch back to Control to recover the full preset.