‘Eye Is Watching You’ Is a Cool and Creepy Art Piece Made with a CRT Viewfinder

There is a reason that CRT (cathode-ray tube) displays were supplanted by modern LCD and OLED screens. They are inefficient, bulky, and it is difficult to make them perform at high resolutions — they can also be dangerous to work on. But whether because of nostalgia or some other factor, CRT displays still appeal to us in the same way as Nixie tubes and Edison bulbs. Something about their glow tickles a special place in our brains, which is why Sideburn Studios used a CRT viewfinder to build this cool and creepy art piece.

While many digital cameras now omit them, viewfinders used to be a necessity. Most viewfinders were (and often still are) purely optical, as they direct light from the camera lens to the eyepiece. When the shutter triggers, a mirror flips out of the way and allows the light from the lens to reach the film or CMOS sensor. That doesn’t work well for video cameras, because they need continuous light as they expose frame after frame. A common solution for a time was to use a dedicated screen for the viewfinder, and a CRT was the display of choice in that era.

This project utilizes a CRT viewfinder from an old RCA CKC 020 video camera. Like most CRT viewfinders from the time, this comes in a very compact package. The entire tube fits into a cylinder that you could fit in your closed hand. It can accept an analog composite video signal and Sideburn Studios just needed to supply that.

Most Raspberry Pi single-board computers have HDMI output, but the original Raspberry Pi Model B and Model A both had composite video output. Some later models, such as the Raspberry Pi Zero W, only made that accessible through bare pads on the PCB, but those original two models had a dedicated RCA port for composite video. Sideburn Studios used a Raspberry Pi Model B for this project to send a continuously looping video of an eyeball to the CRT viewfinder.

The Raspberry Pi and power supplies hide inside of a black box designed in Autodesk Fusion 360 and then 3D-printed, while the unshrouded CRT viewfinder sits on a pedestal above the box. A clear Plexiglass cover keeps curious people from touching the tube and potentially electrocuting themselves.

The result is a piece of art that we believe is the perfect combination of weird and retro.