The author, a filmmaker, discusses the visual powers of the computer, as a system capable of dealing analytically with "periodic phenomena." He compares the computer's ability to manipulate visual data to the musical instrument's ability to process the audio spectrum. He contends that the computer graphic display can make accessible to direct visual experience the periodic phenomena which have heretofore been invisible. Furthermore, he writes that computers have created a new horizon of possibilities for creating motion, as it removes the limits of mass, inertia, and gravity. He concludes by describing the process and effects of his own film, Permutations, with respect to these same concepts.