Long term goal is to fully understand the original VFX process so that I can write a proper simulation in code, and run that on my LED light strips.

Prior art on CE3K LED-strip programming is fun, and quite good, but not a proper simulation of the original technique so it doesn't feel exactly right. Examples:
- https://gist.github.com/jasoncoon/d4c935566ec82731fece
- https://youtu.be/aEVh9WNl57A

Anyway, if I get something I like, I'll GitHub it. Maybe I'll even add the colored conversation lights at some point, too. Though even as a kid, I was amused at how naive it was to depict extraterrestrials that used our modern western diatonic musical scale (even-tempered, no less), and also that their PA system was apparently broadcasting the work of a skilled tubaist. Oh, and earlier in the film, the ETs used our own arbitrary Earth coordinate system to broadcast a meeting location to us. Spielberg just quickly hand-waving some of the most complex and difficult aspects of first contact. (Arrival and Contact were much better takes on it.)

Though, re-watching that scene, it occurs to me that the ETs had been hauling around some earth primates for a while (for some time-dilated values of "a while") and perhaps all those things had been gleaned from them. I wonder if the tubaist was one of the folks who got released during the foreign exchange program at the end, or if they hung onto them just in case?