News of changes, events and new releases.
Lumia, images and links to other sites where people are creating dynamic visual art.
Software and ideas for creating your own lumia, including instruments to connect sound and vision.
Comments from visitors like you.
Credits, footnotes, bios, and other loose ends.
Annotated bibliographies, books, a timeline, profiles of pioneers, and other historical and background material.
Full-text copies of books from the late 19th and early 20th century.
Annotated listings of books and articles related to the history, theory, and techniques of designing instruments and producing lumia.
Highlights in the history of art, science and invention that has produced a visual art like music.
Discussions of topics and background material of interest to lumianists.
Other web sites with related historical and theoretical information.
Order visual music for your computer.
Classic Books






Our field is old enough now that some of its most wonderful works have completed their movement from copyright into the public domain. You can download full-text pdf versions of these classic books for free.

The Future of Painting
The Visual Nature of Color
by Patricia Sloane

Drawing on empirical results, centuries of philosophical discourse, and her own perceptive analytic capabilities, Sloane challenges many of the most treasured and oft-repeated ideas that inform most discussions of color. This is one of my three favorite books on the subject of color.

The Future of Painting
The Future of Painting
by Willard Huntington Wright

This extended essay on the emergence of Modern Art was written in 1923. Its author, a collaborator of H. L. Mencken’s and brother of the painter Stanton Macdonald Wright, was in a perfect position to comment on the developments that were then shaking the art world. As perhaps the clearest early vision of the current art, it is delightful to read.

A Souvenir of the Color Organ
A Souvenir of the Color Organ,
with Some Suggestions in Regard to the Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light
by Bainbridge Bishop

In this short pamphlet published in 1893, Bishop describes his experiments, his instruments and his ideas about color harmony and discord.

The Glistening Bridge
Leopold Survage and the Spatial Problem in Painting
by Samuel Putnam

Apollinaire called Survage the ninth muse. The poet Cendars said that viewing his Colored Rhythm series was like “being present at the creation of the world.” Thirty years before Fantasia, Survage imagined a color, abstract animated film. This 1929 book by his friend is the most comprehensive discussion of the artist’s work available in english.

Copyright 1998–2004 Fred Collopy. This document was last updated on 6/3/04; it is located at RhythmicLight.com.