A Binary Aural and Visual Dreamland by Christina Ducklow

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"Wow, that shirt. " My newest friend in the audience of the Be-In's main stage room pointed to Bob Bralove, on stage setting up for his MIDI fingerpainting performance. I had had a hard time trying to explain Bob's creation, so I was relieved to see that at least the blazing lime green shirt seemed promising to him. Bob showed us MIDI fingerpainting -- using digital signals to simultaneously create sounds and images. The sound filled the room; the images filled the wall above the stage in front of us. Before laying his hands on the keyboard, Bob held a microphone to his mouth and made a low, rumbling noise, reminiscent of the digeridoo played on stage earlier. The fractal-like image rumbled in synch. He got the audience's attention, and also introduced the concept of his art -- the sound and the image are the same energy. My audience friend: "Whoa. " Bob moved on to the keyboard, hitting notes hard then soft, letting them linger and cutting them short. It had all the qualities of an improvisational jam, but he was playing with the direction the images took as well as the path of the notes. When I talked to Bob before the event, he explained how the images influence the music. I watched him on stage as he watched the screen. When he found something he liked, he stayed there, playing with nuances and then moving on to new experiments. The first palette of images used hard angles, matching the intense keyboarding. The second palette was a set of tweaked pictures of water that bounced, shot from the center to the edges of the screen, and twirled as Bob's music flowed around the room. My audience friend leaned in, "That hit of pot is starting to kick in right now. " Ah-ha. . . As we reached the end of our little trip, the announcer prophesized the day when we'd have this kind of light and music show in our own living rooms. In another perhaps delusional statement, my friend announced that he could do that at home probably tomorrow. I nodded politely. I started to wonder if the audience understood the relationships that were going on between the music and the visuals, but I realized there was no sense in it. No sense, I mean, in trying to understand everyone's unique reaction to the art that was created, and no sense in trying to understand the technicalities of how it happened. It was meant to be enjoyed, and clearly it was. "Whoa. "