Dotcomformat

I haven't 'tried' anything like that in years... not since I worked in a planetarium, and did laser light-shows... and even then, it wasn't usually about collecting reflected light, and turning that into a digital signal, to be used to either modulate something, and/or to be a sounce-souce in and of itself. But we did an awful lot of experimenting bouncing lasers off of mirrors, mounted to dedicated speakers/channels (audio-track channels which had been EQ'd and/or enhanced in other ways to obtain specific reaction curves, yet still in sync with the music tracks the audience was hearing)(of course, the audience was being treated (and blasted) which a special quad sound system, designed so that no matter what seat you were in (in a round room, no less), you would always get an extremly wide and dynamic audio spatial field, from the massive speaker-arrays (and subs) mounted behind the dome... and there were a couple of special subs located in the elevator pit of the main star projector in the center of the room. ... (getting of track, here... so back to it)....

We didn't do much... or really, anything that I recall, as far as collecting spent light, and using it to process or source sounds... this was late 1970's-1980... the 'Apple-II' was out, and we had a couple... but the issue was more of software, at that time.... very, very little software... and even fewer people well versed enough to write specialized programs and subroutines. In other words... it was 'still' an analog world... (even pre-MIDI)... so we created using hardware... like mirrors (rotating or not... vibrating, sychronus or not)... diffraction-grading, refraction-grading, prisims, rotating and/or vibrating mirrors, and all sorts of optics, and very specialized projection systems... and all of it was automated, using up to 6-tracks out of the 8 tracks (on 1" tape).

I did get a start on experimenting with using my ARP-2500 to 'voltage-control' the laser's various mirror systems, combined with some electronics designed and built by our staff electronics-dude (It always nice when you have an electronics engineer/designer, who is also a musician, and can see things the way 'music people' would want to work with stuff). His control system designs also worked on voltage-control.

Having said all of that (as usual... the long way around the barn)... I gotta wonder... it 'seems' almost as if you're converting light back into sound (or just light into sound), that the end results, I'm guessing, would likely be not really that unique... unlike, collecting and processing various naturally ocurring stellar phenomena... and probably just listening with little processing... or, converting various particles into a 'sound-range' that humans can hear.

Other than that... I've got a sneaking suspicion that light, used as a controller, or as the sound-source, is not as fulfilling as some would hope. So far, all that I've seen in that direction was a lot more trouble than it was worth, and could be done much easier, and less expensive with traditional methods. Even using light collected in a photocell... kind of a ... (pick your own word)... in that you have to keep unwanted light from the sensor, while still allowing the operator to see what he's doing. I see much more being done in 'reactive lighting', than in 'source lighting'... but then, they don't let me out, much. : (