I went to talk with one of our technicians, Rory, and it turned out that the technician team actual have an old oscilloscope. I was able to borrow it and managed to get it to work in the exact way I was hoping it would.
I wasn’t actually able to figure out how to get the oscilloscope generating a lissajous figure through my computer audio, however I was able to connect it straight into my synth, which is the source of the generative sound. By plugging two 1/4 inch jack to RCA cables from the two outputs on the synth into the two inputs on the oscilloscope, I managed to get the oscilloscope looking like the image above. By routing a 1/4 inch jack to mini jack cable from the phones output of the synth to the phones input of my laptop, I could simultaneously hear the sound and see the oscilloscope’s reaction. Here’s a video.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sJhNphBFZwkfmiKaGz86rQwZ4Ukql8HV/view?usp=sharing
It felt so fulfilling to see this idea start coming to life, and through using the synth and oscilloscope the process and outcome felt organic and intuitive. Any parameter that I changed on the synth patch would cause a random response from the oscilloscope, and I spent hours playing around with this analogue gear. It was nice to get away from the laptop. The only problem now is figuring out how to get the same effect through audio from my laptop or a Raspberry Pi, which I’m sure I will be able to do in the coming days.