The Colors! The Colors!

Also in this issue

To read Holly Willis' article about L.A.'s graphics scene, click here.

To read Holly Willis' article about L.A.'s Whitney brothers and their animations, click here.

To read Greg Burk's article about REDCAT's "Sea Hear Now" series, click here. Wilfred, a Dane relocated to Long Island, devoted most of his life to the development and promotion of the art of colored light projection, or “lumia.” He designed several unique “Clavilux” instruments, performed solo and with musical accompaniment throughout the U.S. and Europe, and even founded the Art Institute of Light. Throughout his career (he was active until his death in 1968), Wilfred also designed and produced preprogrammed, self-contained versions of his instruments — his “Clavilux Juniors” — suitable for home or museum display. Three of these — ranging from 10 by 11 inches (Multidimensional, Opus79,1932) to 6 by 9 feet (Study inDepth,Opus152;designed in 1952 for the lobby of the Clairol Corp.’s Manhattan digs) — have been gathered for “Visual Music.”

James Whitney, Lapis (1963-66)

I have some quibbles with the installation — MOCA’s always-leaky soundscape is nowhere more apparent than in the presence of these languorously mutating (the Clairol piece takes 142 days to complete its cycle) light fields, which were intended to be viewed in silence. It’s also unfortunate that logistics prevent museum-goers from being able to view the enormous mechanisms of projectors, color transparencies and rotating metal reflectors going through their permutations. And a couch would be nice. But these little-known, rarely seen flat-screen rear-projection arabesques of galaxylike clouds of pure color are such a sweet and contemplative revelation that these reservations are rendered moot. This is not the case for some of the other environmental works represented here. It’s particularly disappointing that there was no attempt to re-create the legendary Vortexshows at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium organized by beatnik electronic composer Henry Jacobs with filmmakers Jordan Belson, Hy Hirsch and James Whitney, as well as new devices designed by the planetarium staff and research engineers from Stanford. What was by reputation a watershed of multimedia cross-pollination and immersive, experimental, time-based art making — as well as the direct precursor of the psychedelic light show — is summed up by a single Belson animation. Projected in another small theater, Allures(1961) is indistinguishable from the other, conventional theatrical movies included. Nevertheless, it rocks. As do the similarly decontextualized examples of psychedelic-light-show sequences from Mark Boyle and Joan Hills, Joshua White, and local luminaries Single Wing Turquoise Bird. Inspiteof— or perhaps because of — the relegation of visual-music abstraction to the periphery of culture, it flourished, especially on the West Coast, where sympathetic industry insiders and trickle-down patronage (particularly in the form of supplies and technology) ensured a thriving symbiosis between the commercial and avant-garde domains. The emergence and global dissemination of the hippie light show is one example. More explicitly linked to Hollywood were experimental filmmakers like Belson (Demon Seed)and John and James Whitney (Saul Bass’ title sequence for Vertigo;2001’s“stargate” sequence, via Douglas Trumbull). The L.A.-based Whitney brothers were relentless innovators (see sidebar), and their experimental film work (along with that of John Whitney Jr.) is given the inverse treatment to the light shows — a huge gallery/theater is devoted exclusively to a sequence of their dazzling, intricate optical feasts, from the seething mandalas of James’ Lapis(1963–66) to John Jr.’s almost seizure-inducing triple-screen magnum opus SidePhaseDrift(1965). While offering up unparalleled sensory experiences, these works also raise the question of how great religious art — patterns as intricate as a mosaicked mosque dome flash by in fractions of a second in a Whitney animation — can be indistinguishable from mathematically and mechanically generated optical patterns.

Viking Eggeling, Symphonie Diagnale (1924)

This affinity with Eastern mysticism is no coincidence. The Whitneys were specifically interested in the teachings of cave-dwelling yogi Sri Ramana Maharishi, but there are probably only a handful of artists in “Visual Music” who weren’t exploring some version of non-Western spiritual practice — most of which includes some form of meditative visualization. A not-unrelated subtext is the influence of psychedelic drugs: Harry Smith, whose restored hand-painted Number3animation is a highlight of the entrance gallery, was both a devoted hermeticist and a notorious imbiber of psychoactives — he always kept a drawerful of peyote buttons handy in his Chelsea Hotel room. The show’s central concept of synaesthesia (the overlapping of sensory phenomena, as when loud sounds are experienced as flashes of light) owes its cultural familiarity to the widespread use of marijuana, magic mushrooms and LSD. As American society’s tolerance for these substances and their radically re-orienting effects diminished in the ’70s, so did the momentum that had resulted in such an explosion of light and sound. After the early video synthesizer work by Stephen Beck and the computer animations of Larry Cuba, “Visual Music” also begins to lose steam. It might have been different with a different curatorial agenda — off the top of my head, where are Steve Roden, Pat O’Neill (currently showing at Rosamund Felsen, thank you), Bill Viola, Gary Panter, etc.? Where are the members of L.A.’s iota Center, who continue the tradition of abstract filmmaking? Where is the Emergency Broadcast Network, which designed U2’s boggling ZooTV tour? Yet even the best of the contemporary work actually included — Jennifer Steinkamp’s vertiginous, room-filling computer animation Swell(1995) and Cindy Bernard and Joseph Hammer’s hypnotic projections+sound(1999–2001/2005) — lack the sense of discovery that electrified their predecessors. Jim Hodges’ walk-through stripe painting with annoying soundtrack is merely retro, while Nike Savvas’ Anthem(TheCarny)(2003) seems like a deliberately enervated version of a less-than-state-of-the-art disco. Which indicates where “Visual Music” took the wrong turn. The true evolution of the first two-thirds of the show points not toward fine artists producing work for galleries, collectors and museums, but to media that reach a far greater portion and spectrum of the public — the elaborate audio-visual environments of dance clubs and Vegas casinos and the world of cinematic special effects. In a sense, the art movement that essentially went underground when Fischinger quit Disney was finally integrated into every average American lifestyle, though who can say how much of the original inspiration survived after being reconfigured for commercial ends? If the assimilation had been total and harmonious, you wouldn’t expect “Visual Music” to pack much of a punch. Instead, the show offers a series of deeply affecting and closely interrelated audio-visual experiences that have seldom been made so available and are unlikely to be collected in one space again. He who has eyes, let him listen. “VISUALMUSIC”| MOCA Grand Avenue, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles | Through May 22