It began as a viral email. It said:
‘Check out this farm equipment. Read the information below before clicking on the attachment. This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between The Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft Iowa, yes farm equipment! It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, Calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see it was WELL worth the effort. It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.’
Of course, none of this was true. The machine was a digital animation created by a media company called Animusic.
Animusic is a company based in Ithaca, NY. It was founded by Wayne Lytle, whose dream was to synchronize music and animation. Their work combines elements of art, science, design and humor to create a unique visual representation of digitally synthesized music. Something completely different.