Bill Sebastian is the founder of Visual Music Systems, which is developing technology to make music a fully visual experience.

For years, the 1970s-era OVC lay ignored in the backyard of Sebastian’s home in Falmouth.

Sebastian has been working in a Boston office on his invention’s digital successor, which visualizes music three-dimensionally.

The optical synthesizer called the Outerspace Visual Communicator, or OVC.

The new synthesizer is his second attempt to take “the most powerful art form, music, and make it available to our most powerful sense, which is vision,” Sebastian said.

Sebastian plays down the notion that he’s a synesthete, that is, someone who “sees” or experiences sound as color.

Sebastian is well aware the concept can sound baffling, and more than a little nutty, to a skeptical audience.

“My theory is, if you get people to use their minds differently, they’ll look at the world differently,” he said.

“It could be a pretty phenomenal experience for the human race,” he said. “That’s the thing you hope for.”