Very early animated graphics timed to music...

You need to drift back in time now. You are drifting far back. Right back to the early 1980s:-

I was toying with ideas when I decided to try to get our "BBC Micro" (computer) to draw animated pictures in time to music. I am not sure but I'd never heard of this being done before then. I simply plugged some wires from a speaker output through a filter into the back of the computer to pick up the bass beat. Next I knocked up some code to let me pick from a number of pre-drawn images that I made or it would generate one in computer code (lots of spinning lines or polygons, stuff like that).

Snap back to today:

I was looking at some old photos when I came across the only image I think I have of this. In it you can see the "hi-fi", a cassette player, and on the right a TV picture with some lines drawn on it. You are going to have to crank up your imagination here...

Just image the (hissy cassette) music, (go on, get into the era). Now, (never having seen it before), on the telly, lines moved. And they changed colour and direction in time to the funky beat! Then the image would change and you had things like cocktail glasses shattering (and re-assembling) to the tune (each frame previously hand drawn on the computer).

I took this photo as we were getting ready for a party (so the computer is set up under the cupboard the TV is on) and we used this throughout the party as a curious musical accompaniment (along with a homemade sound to light unit!). I'd got the music to graphics going a year or so before this but here we are, June or July 1984:

"Far out"

(as it was not cool to say anymore, even back then but I like the expression).

Yes, but was it art?

I like to think so.