Birth of Music Visualization (Apr, 1924)
The date’s correct. Article in Popular Mechanics, April 1924.
From the article:
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The clavilux has three manuals and a triple light chamber, corresponding respectively to the keyboard and wind chest of the pipe organ. Disk keys appear on the manual, moving to and from the operator and playing color and form almost as the pipe organ plays sound.
There are 100 positions for each key, making possible almost infinite combinations of color and form. The “music,” or notation, is printed in figures upon a five-lined staff, three staves joined, as treble and bass clefs are joined for piano, to provide a “clef” for each of the three manuals. A color chord is represented by three figures as, for example, “40-35-60″; and movement of the prescribed keys to the designated positions on the numbered scale of the keyboard produces the desired figure.
The artist sits at the keyboard with the notation book before him. He releases the light by means of switches. By playing upon the keys he projects it upon the screen, molds it into form, makes the form move and change in rhythm, introduces texture and depth, and finally injects color of perfect purity in any degree of intensity.
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When you have the time, check out the archives of Popular Mechanics and Popular Electronics for that matter at Google Books.
I don’t know if a topic map of the “hands-on” projects from those zines would have a market or not. The zines covering that sort of thing have died, or at least that is my impression.
Modern equivalents to Popular Mechanics/Electronics that you can point out?