In 1971 the latest craze was an electronic, music triggered, light box that flashed colored lights to the beat of your music. I built a 3 channel, 2 foot by 4 foot box that flashed blue lights for low frequency audio, red lights for medium frequency audio and yellow lights for high frequency audio. Here in the USA they sold these boxes at major electronics stores. Some of the Media Players today have a "Graphic Visualization" option thay syncronizes your music with a graphic display. I feel that this enhances your music listening experience. Maybe some day developers with bring back that option for our Maemo media players.
I remember those... Very fun. And, definitely the precursor to graphic visualizations.
Of course, all of this is possible, but having your screen display animated graphics that sync to audio may be a serious battery hog (maybe?). Would be cool to see, though!
Microsoft flirted with this years ago-- Windows Media Center edition came with little lifelike avatars that could move according to what was going on at the time (I know music was an input but I think there may have been others). The effect was lightweight and I'm not sure why it didn't take off... maybe it was the fact that one of the avatars was a cute female and her dance moves were a big turn on. Maybe too many wives complained. Maybe male productivity took a nosedive.
Microsoft flirted with this years ago-- Windows Media Center edition came with little lifelike avatars that could move according to what was going on at the time (I know music was an input but I think there may have been others). The effect was lightweight and I'm not sure why it didn't take off... maybe it was the fact that one of the avatars was a cute female and her dance moves were a big turn on. Maybe too many wives complained. Maybe male productivity took a nosedive.
Or was it just me?
Microsoft also had a screen saver (remember CRT displays) that created colored triangular shapes. Although not syncronized to music, it had a relaxing effect if viewed while playing music.
Microsoft flirted with this years ago-- Windows Media Center edition came with little lifelike avatars that could move according to what was going on at the time (I know music was an input but I think there may have been others).
graphics visualizers have a long history and tradition .
best experience I remember were from the amiga scene where the ".mod" popularity really helped to mix up and sync graphics and music (the mods are sequence of event of playing a specific short sample and that made them perfect for visualizing specific graphic effect linked to a specific sound). Winamp broaded the 'genre' and the xbox360 'builtin' visualizer gave a bit of money to Jeff Minter (since the thread look a bit 'old school' Jeff Minter is that genius behind llamasoft http://www.llamasoft.co.uk
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