SynGuru
aka Dr. Thomas L. Rhea
Electronic Music Historian, Musician, Author & Teacher
All of these videos were derived from a very poor VHS tape, which accounts for how poor the color renditions are here. However, on the Commodore 64 screen the OxyLights Editor showed the colors Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue quite vividly. Unfortunately, no video of the actual performance on the "giant screen" of OxyLights was ever done.
"Algorithmic" was created by supplying a short musical motif and a musical rest. In this case, the rest was not in the same time scale as the selected motif. This created some loping rhythms that would not have occurred otherwise.
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This strategy was adopted primarily because I had such limited time to create the required number of minutes of original music! Doing this movement using the algorithm I had discovered as a part of Bob Makar's Moog Song Producer software enhanced the final outcome. In fact it made it possible!
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Given the fact the Moog Song Producer could not transmit "velocity" information, this little movement actually did "swing" just a bit in spots!
Note that OxyLights–which is no longer extant, was polyphonic, which allows several different musical lines to be displayed at the same time. One can have stars going up while bars go left to right. While it is true that a single MIDI note can cause any configuration of lights to appear, it is also true that at least 4 musical lines can be expressed independently, as this movement illustrates. If this makes no sense to you, simply watch!
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Also, note that this movement is not in a simple 2/4 or 3/4 meter. Maybe it's "in thirteen?" Also note that this "drummer" has an ability to play with an incredible independence of limbs!