MOST people old enough to remember the Commodore, one of the first home computers released in the late 70s, will perhaps be more familiar with its 80s console offshoot the Commodore 64 - that ran classic computer games like Pac-Man, Impossible Mission, Bubble Bobble, Out Run and Tetris.

The fact these computers were never designed to create music hasn't stopped electronic artist-cum-scientist Robert Henke from rising to the challenge.

Tonight he uses not the console but a model from the early 80s, the CBM (Computer Business Machine) 8032, to create a unique audio-visual performance based on the tiny 8-bit CPU - a speed, Henke explains, far slower than even your washing machine.

Something of a tech whizz, Henke's engineering background has seen him co-develop one of the most widely used music software programmes, Ableton Live, which he himself uses for his electronic project Monolake.

A table of Commodores, which face the audience, lines the stage like a control room as the professorial Henke patiently taps in a sequencing code into one of them to produce individual sounds that build to become something very close to a dance beat.

Another computer is used to project graphics onto a giant projector, not something you could do in the 80s, and the other three help generate the sounds.

At one point the sound, which Henke embellishes with effects from a mixing desk, is so loaded with feedback it reminds one of the piercing noise that old Spectrum games made while you waited for them to load.

So tonight's performance begs the question, if the Commodore has been around since the 70s and 80s why has it taken this long for such a performance, strange as it is, to take place?

Henke's argument is that while everything presented could have been done in 1980, it needed the cultural backdrop of today to come up with the artistic ideas driving it.

However, it's hard to imagine the project's appeal will go much beyond curious computer programmers and algoravers.