Once upon a time there was a computer music system called GROOVE (Generating
Realtime Operations On Voltage-controlled Equipment, Bell Telephone
Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey) which outputted in the realm of
sound, and was a wonderful and still-unique tool for the composition
thereof. At that time a then-young composer who was using GROOVE for music
got the harebrained idea that if she made a few minor changes here and there
she could use it to compose images as well. This she did in 1974-6, and
though the untimely demise of the system prevented creation of much
documentation in the form of aesthetic works of its output, the system did
function sufficiently to make some description worthwhile. While it is true
that the mid-1960s DDP-224 computer on which GROOVE became a VAMPIRE (Video
And Music Program for Interactive Realtime Exploration/Experimentation) was
a massive room-sized computer, it has by now long been eclipsed in power by
the constantly improving home computer. It is worth describing the concepts
involved in part because there are by now many small computers capable of
emulating its musical methods. Besides, I had a deep personal relationship
with that computer, and wish to commemorate it. Here then follows the tale
of Graphical GROOVE, aka the VAMPIRE.