In his essay “A Comment, A Case History and A Plan”, Gordon Pask famously pointed out that “[an aesthetically potent environment should] offer sufficient variety to provide the potentially controllable novelty required by a man (however, it must not swamp him with variety – if it did, the environment would merely be unintelligible).” Pask, therefore, created a cybernetic machine called Musicolour that explores this relationship between the performer and a lighting effect, which eventually forms a feedback loop that encourages the performer to diversify their creation.
Likewise, PULSE is a project that experiments with the extent of interactivity between the performer, the environment, and the audience. The thin strands of optical fibres create music visualisation from a physical, tangible interface, reacting timely to the BPM of a playing track.