Sonovision: A Visual Display of Sound

Leonardo, Vol. 3, pp. 443-445. Pergamon Press 1970. Printed in Great Britain SONOVISION: A VISUAL DISPLAY OF SOUND S. R . Wagler* People were intrigued by the possible relationship between patterns and colors to sounds already at the time of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle, in his 'De Sensu', expressed his desire for a harmonious relation between colors and musical chords. Isaac Newton attempted to find a correspondence between the frequencies ofcolors and the notes of the musical scale. Bertrand Castel, a philosopher and mathematician , in 1734, developed his 'clavessin oculaire', a color organ that related seven colors to the seven whole notes of the occidental musical scale. The American physicist, Albert Michelson, predicted in 1899 that there would develop a color art analogous to that of music, 'color music', in which the performer would play the colors of the spectrum in any succession or combination. In 1922, Thomas Wilfred, an American of Danish origin, built an instrument such as imagined by Michelson and gave public demonstrations of it. Wilfred died in 1968. A large example of his 'Lumia', a light picture in motion on a translucent screen, can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The 'Lumia' does not respond to sound. A more detailed historical account of work on color music can be found in the essay by Philip Steadman in Reference 1. Many artists and engineers have, in recent years, attempted to realize the aspirations of the early pioneers. However, in my view, most attempts have failed to produce an aesthetically satisfactory visual display of music. A major reason for failure in the early phases of this development was the lack of an optical and electronic technology. The first types of audio-visual devices were very complicated and expensive. Also, most early investigators were confused by the attempted mathematical analogy between sound and light wave frequencies, where frequency = wave velocity/wave length. The term 'color organ' of the pioneers arises from the idea ofcorrelating light frequency (or color) with sound frequency (or tone). To the best of my knowledge, neither a physiological mechanism that relates color with sound nor a universal psychological relationship between them has been found [2]. More recent attempts in this field have placed emphasis on relating sound intensity or loudness to • Sonovision, Inc., P.O. Box 1746, 290 South Wagner Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106, U.S.A. (Received 5 January 1970.) 443 light intensity, leaving color changes of the resulting display to projection of light through a color wheel that is not correlated to the music. Although many of these devices have initial fascination, the lack of intricate audio- visual coordination soon leaves the viewer bored. F. J. Malina, who has also worked with such devices, in personal correspondence has told me that he agrees with my opinion. A new device has been invented by Lloyd G. Cross that makes a visual display in color correlated to sound by projecting a krypton or helium- neon laser light beam on to a translucid screen or opaque surface [3]. A diagram of the major components is shown in Fig. 1. .,.-4 Screen or Wall Fig. 1. Diagram ofthe major components ofa Sonovision system for a visual display ofsound. When there is no sound input to the device, the beam gives only a pinpoint of light, When one simple sound or musical note is introduced into the device, the dot moves in an ellipse at the frequency of the sound supplied. The size of the ellipse is related directly to the loudness of the note and can be adjusted by turning a knob on the control panel. When the note is changed to another one, a different ellipse with a new orientation is formed. When two notes are introduced simultaneously, the laser beams produce a combination of the two ellipses, similar to the Lissajous patterns obtained from cathode-ray tubes. Thus a symphony of notes will result in a symphony of ellipse interference patterns on the display screen (cf. Figs. 2(a), (b) and (c)). Music, which is usually a complex of many frequencies at any given instant, is represented as a mixture ofpure tone patterns. The pattern generated 444 S. R...