Old, but worth mentioning . . . if for no other reason that you’re thinking about color in new ways as you stare into your green beer for St. Patrick’s Day. (Or even a green river, a la Chicago.)

The Music Animation Machine renders familiar music as series of colored bars, in still image or animated video, reminiscent of a piano roll editor in a sequencing application. Color represents harmonic area, so as you look at the piece you see form, structure, shape, and harmony in new ways.

It certainly raises some interesting questions: with new tools at our disposal, what might be a more useful (or visually exciting) way of looking at music? With interactive tools, you could even play with the resulting renderings in real-time. I’m sure I can come up with a really compelling idea if I drink enough green ale. Or, at least, I’ll start to think it’s really compelling.

Pictured: Bach Brandenberg No. 6, mvmt. 3.

Over a hundred years ago, Thomas Edison first attempted to record sound and moving image in synchronization (a task that still challenges undergrad film students). The results were believed lost for many years, until the sound was recovered on a broken cylinder. Edison’s original experiment actually failed, but in the hands of legendary film and sound editor Walter Murch, these 17 seconds of film history are now restored realized more perfectly than even Edison could:

1895 Edison “Kinetophone” Test, shot by William Dickson [Internet Archive]