Though Sebastian plays down the notion that he’s a synesthete, that is, someone who “sees” or experiences sound as color, Ventrella says the definition can be broadened. He helped Sebastian design the “visual language” of the new OVC, creating vividly colored particle systems and “dancing fractals.” Jeffrey Ventrella is a musician, artist, and computer programmer who studied at the MIT Media Lab in the early 1990s.
“Imagine you wanted to record the first sound in your head - let’s say it’s Beethoven - but first you had to build a violin, and ask questions like, what’s a loudspeaker? If you had to build everything? This is kind of like that,” says Sebastian of his operation. Joshua Slocum, an engineer with Bill Sebastian’s Visual Music Systems, models a hand controller (left) for Sebastian’s Outerspace Visual Communicator.
Sebastian envisions applications for the 3-D OVC ranging from planetariums to virtual reality headsets. The team has been working on proprietary computer programs and prototypes of the new OVC, which, in place of the keyboard and buttons, is operated by hand controllers that look a bit like robotic arms fitted with valves (like those of a trumpet) and sliders (roughly analogous to the frets on a guitar). “We really feel this is the art form of the 21st century.”įor the past several months, two fellow engineers and computer programmers have been working with Sebastian at his company Visual Music Systems, headquartered in a mixed-use office space above a sub shop near Downtown Crossing. The new visual synthesizer - this one in 3-D - is his second attempt to take “the most powerful art form, music, and make it available to our most powerful sense, which is vision,” Sebastian said one recent evening. For years, the early OVC lay ignored in the backyard of Sebastian’s home in Falmouth.
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