80s

A short clip of 1980s news coverage in which people react angrily to new drunk driving laws, with some calling them communist.

A three-minute clip about Ernst Dickmanns' VaMoR and VaMP projects, in which fully autonomous vehicles drove thousands of miles on public roads in the 1980s. It is a brief look at early German self-driving research.

A video essay explaining hauntology, Mark Fisher's idea of lost futures, and 80s nostalgia. It uses the Fallout games and other media as examples of a retro-futurism that mourns futures that never arrived.

A short demo of SEdit, the structure editor for Interlisp-D on Xerox Lisp machines in the 1980s, which edits code as trees rather than text.

Professor Brailsford of the University of Nottingham describes how the university set out to print its own mathematics exam papers in the 1980s. The story centers on getting a Mergenthaler Linotron 202 typesetter to work with their own software.

The official 1986 music video for Paranoimia by Art of Noise featuring the computer-generated TV personality Max Headroom. It is a synth-pop and sampling-era piece of 80s pop culture.

The official remastered 4K video for a-ha's 1985 hit, famous for its rotoscoped pencil-sketch animation blending live action and comic-book drawings. It won six MTV Video Music Awards in 1986.

The official music video for David Hasselhoff's synthwave track True Survivor, written for the film Kung Fury. It is an 80s-style pop song from the Kickstarter-funded movie.

The official video for Carpenter Brut's Turbo Killer, directed by Seth Ickerman, with psychedelic 1980s-styled visuals set to rock-leaning synthwave.

The official music video for Tommy Tutone's 1981 hit 867-5309/Jenny. The chorus is built around a phone number.

A run through the 32 factory presets of the Yamaha DX7 FM synthesizer, with timestamps for each patch such as brass, strings, pianos, bass and tubular bells. It is a straight audio demo of the sounds.

The official HD music video for NENA's 1983 hit 99 Luftballons, a Cold War song about balloons triggering a war.

The official video for 'Da Da Da' by the German Neue Deutsche Welle band Trio, a sparse, minimalist pop song. The track uses a cheap Casio VL-1 keyboard as its core sound.

Kung Fury is a 30-minute crowd-funded 80s action comedy about a kung fu cop who travels back in time to kill Hitler, packed with retro tropes.

The first episode of the Yacht Rock web series, a comedic parody about the smooth soft-rock musicians of the late 1970s and early 80s. It is a short, scripted sketch set at Koko's Boat House.

A full upload of Alan Kay's 1987 talk, with demos of several Smalltalk-era software systems and ideas about visual, kinesthetic and symbolic reasoning. It includes a Smalltalk program written by a 12-year-old and footage of the Rand tablet.

Captain Disillusion's VFXcool episode, led by Alan Melikdjanian, takes a 41-minute nostalgic look at how the visual effects of Flight of the Navigator were made. It covers early computers, motion control, in-camera effects and practical crafts.

Part 1 of a documentary on the Commodore Amiga, from the Lorraine prototype and the Atari and Commodore buyouts through the Amiga 1000 launch in the 1980s.

A comedic Kung Fury spinoff in which Hackerman demonstrates 'hacking' household objects through time. It parodies 1980s hacker tropes.

The classic 1980s anti-drug PSA in which a father confronts his son about drugs and is told 'I learned it by watching you'.

Nate Harrison's 2004 video history of the Amen Break, a six-second drum sample from a 1969 b-side that became the basis of hip-hop sampling, jungle and drum and bass. It is also a meditation on cultural ownership and creativity.

A rap battle in which John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek debate the causes of boom and bust, stimulus, and bailouts. It was produced by Econstories to teach the two schools of thought.

A 1972 song by Adriano Celentano whose lyrics are nonsense syllables designed to sound like American English to non-English speakers. It is a rock and rap-flavored novelty track with a video.

The complete six-stage album series Everywhere at the End of Time by The Caretaker, about 6.5 hours of music that depicts the progression of dementia through distorted, decaying old ballroom recordings.

A mashup that plays a Miles Davis improvisation video alongside an LCD Soundsystem clip with no editing, so the two seem to perform together. It also became known for an affectionate mouse cursor moving along.

A full performance of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians by eighth blackbird with Third Coast Percussion and others, recorded in Chicago in 2011. It is an hour-long minimalist piece built on phasing and repeating patterns.

OK Go's music video for This Too Shall Pass, featuring a huge Rube Goldberg machine built in a warehouse in Los Angeles with Syyn Labs. The band interacts with the contraption in one continuous take.

MC Frontalot's nerdcore rap about the text adventure Zork, made for Jason Scott's Get Lamp documentary and featuring a cameo by Steve Meretzky. It was filmed over an evening in a basement.

William Shatner's spoken-word cover of Pulp's 'Common People', from his album Has Been.

Drummer Danny Carey performs Tool's 'Pneuma' live in Boston, in a Vic Firth session with close views of his playing.

Vox Earworm explains why John Coltrane's Giant Steps is so hard to improvise over: it is fast and moves through three keys. Musicians Braxton Cook and Adam Neely walk the host through the underlying music theory.

Commander Chris Hadfield performs a revised version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, recorded aboard the International Space Station. It was released as a music video in 2013.

OK Go's music video for Upside Down & Inside Out, filmed during parabolic flights so the band and performers are weightless in the plane.

Bo Burnham's song from his special Inside, a satirical take on internet culture, attention and extremism.

Pink Floyd's Echoes played in sync with the final Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite segment of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The song's length closely matches the sequence.

The original music video for Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen, a spoken-word piece built on Mary Schmich's 1997 column of life advice, produced by Baz Luhrmann.

A short Tracklib video visualizing the disco sample that Daft Punk's One More Time is built from. It shows how the track is composed from the original material.

Nardwuar interviews Pharrell and Shay of N.E.R.D. in Vancouver, using his trademark deep research and gifts. The extended version runs about ten minutes.

Jim Pavloff rebuilds The Prodigy's 'Voodoo People' in Ableton from its listed samples. The video shows how the track is assembled and how close a handmade reconstruction can sound.

Linus Akesson demonstrates the Commodordion, a fully functional 8-bit accordion built around Commodore 64 hardware with bellows made of floppy disks. He performs Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag and tells the story of the build.