TV PARTY TONIGHT
Re-create a mid-1970s video trip by
plugging this box into any TV and audio
source. Beneath the fake wood paneling,
a Propeller microcontroller simulates
Atari’s classic music visualizer.
In 1976, Atari introduced Atari Video Music, a plugged-in
music visualizer designed by Pong creator Bob Brown that
bridged the yawning gap between consumers’ stereos and
their TV sets. The quirky, psychedelic pixelation device never
caught on, but watching it in action today (search You Tube),
one is taken back to another time, long before iTunes and
Winamp visualizers. It was a time when vinyl, denim, Foghat,
mood rings, limited color palettes, and RadioShack’s
business model all somehow made sense.
And while Foghat’s career may be a distant memory,
interest in Atari’s long-gone device remains. So we introduce
the Pixelmusic 3000, a weekend project that pays tribute
to those groovy times, and to a product that was either too
quirky or too revolutionary to make it past its first year’s
production run.
Photography by Tarikh Korula
Today, of course, the technologies that enabled Atari Video
Music are much smaller, cheaper, and more accessible. We’ll
use the Propeller microcontroller and its video libraries to
create a simple AVM-like visualizer that feeds a TV from an
iPod or other music player.
Set up: p. 117 Make it: p. 118 Use it: p. 123
Tarikh Korula is co-founder of the software and hardware development firm Uncommon Projects
( uncommonprojects.com).
Make: 115
