For me, the hypercanvas as a concept was first introduced by MTV. Growing up in Wyoming I had never been introduced to a lot of creative media. When MTV came about it was a revelation. MTV impacted me for the music and music videos, some of which were visually stunning works of art, but I was most impressed by those short 30 second or 1 minute creative segues that MTV put between videos. They came from all mediums, usually had little point to get across except visual entertainment and distraction. I was hooked. Those creative explorations were a brilliant evolution of the visual genius of Sesame Street's creative TV. When it came time for me to start thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said I wanted to make the creative shorts for MTV. Sadly, MTV has none of this brilliance anymore, leaving a wide hole for new platforms to display visual motion art.
But the music video and the hypercanvas will always be married, because music lends itself more to abstract creative visualization than anything. Almost anyone will watch a visual exploration if there is a song going along with it.
To pay homage to the tradition, here is a nice piece of visual set to Interpol's "Rest My Chemistry".