“Electronic Artist” was developed between 1976 and 1980, before personal computers became widely available. It took the form of an electronic unit connected to a standard colour television. An operator could draw light images on the screen and alter their form, colour and brightness. The device could invert an image, fill it with raster patterns, change its scale, and programme movement and pulsation. In silent mode, it could be used by designers and textile artists.
In automatic light-music mode, the brightness and colour of the images responded to the musical signal.
Horizontal- and vertical-frequency generators acted as electronic stencils. Signals from the console or an audio source shaped their output voltages, producing three independent composite video signals — one for each colour gun in the cathode-ray tube. Flexible signal processing gave the system a wide range of visual effects.
In automatic mode, the light images changed in synchrony with the music.
The device used the RGB colour system. With an encoder, it could also connect to the television’s aerial input.
The installation consisted of a self-contained control console with a television set placed on top.
“Electronic Artist” was shown at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy and at a Soviet national exhibition in the United Kingdom.
The installation was described in Technology of Cinema and Television (no. 2, 1983, pp. 51–54) and Science and Life (no. 5, 1985), and in Bulat Galeev, Sergei Zorin and Rustem Saifullin, Light-Music Instruments (Moscow: Radio i Svyaz, 1987), pp. 110–114.
