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.
Archive Sites






Maura McDonnell’s Sounding Visual site contains clips of her work, notes that support her teaching, and historical material on visual music.

Laurie Spiegel; Retiary Ramblings houses the reflections of one of the most imaginative pioneers in both electronic music and computer-based abstract visualization. This eclectic and very personal site contains a broad selection of her works and reflections. Of particular interest to many here might be her reflections on VAMPIRE, a visual music system that she developed while at Bell Labs in the 1970s.

Criticalartware, a Chicago-based collective, maintains a web site that links the video art movement of the 1970s with the growth of software art and new media theory and practice. Their site contains their interviews of people who have been involved in these movements as well as their own thoughts about an envionment in which these movements can be discussed and explored.

Larry Cuba's iota center is a non-profit orgaization “dedicated to preserving and promoting the art of light and movement.” The site's Historical Database Project provides links to historical articles, film sources, and a substantial list of artists working in related areas. iota also maintains a discussion list. In 2000, the members of the iota discussion list produced a video compilation of their works.

The Center for Visual MusicCenter for Visual Music is a nonprofit film archive dedicated to visual music, experimental animation and avant-garde media. CVM is commited to preservation, curation, education, scholarship, and dissemination of the film, performances and other media of this tradition, together with related historical documentation and artwork. Their site has extensive collections of material by early pioneers such as Oskar Fischinger, Mary Ellen Bute and Jordan Belson as well as DVDs and notices of performances by current artists.

Eugene and Carol Epstein and Andy Pepper’s Light Art Lumia site celebrates the work of Thomas Wilfred, a pioneer in the art of light and the creator of the term 'lumia' to describe it. The site contains many magnificent images from his works, including an extended sequence from Opus 161. It also provides background information on his instruments and material related to a project that the Epsteins, Rudi Stern, and George Stadnick have undertaken to restore Wilfred's Clavilux, a lumia projection instrument.

Henry Warwick’s San Francisco Performance Cinema Symposium site reports on the September 2003 gathering of film-makers and other visual artists exploring the concept of “performative cinema”. The site contains background information and the text of many of the talks presented there.

Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel’s Future Cinema site is the online catalog for an exhibition covering recent developments in video, film, computer and web-based installations.

Davidson Gigliotti and Ira Schneider’s Radical Software site contains all eleven issues of the publication which were published between 1970 and 1974. Sort of the Wired of its day, Radical Software was the most influential outlet for those working in alternative video during that period. In addition to pdf versions of the magazine, the site provides a history of the Raindance Corporation and related entities, and an update on some of the key participants.

Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sounds, by William Moritz, historically critiques her contributions to abstract animation. In addition, it provides a filmography of her works.

Dead Links

William Moritz’s survey of experimental animation contains 62 linked articles discussing the work of animators through the century. His timeline is filled with interesting facts, filmogaphies, and pointers to sources for copies of the films. His survey covers the work of dozens of pioneering animators including Survage, Ruttman, Richter, Fischinger, Eggeling, Whitney, Lye, Bute, and Smith. The clever layouts, liberal use of thumbnail and animated gifs, and Moritz's deep familiarity with the history make this an exceptional site. Unfortunately is is not currently online. If you become aware of it's reappearance, please let me know.

Ron Pellegrino’s site for the Electronic Arts of Sound and Light contains sections from Ron's classic book in the field, current essays, interviews with audio engineers, and pointers to lots of other interesting sites.

Byron Grush’s description of impressions on viewing the films of Oskar Fischinger contains interesting observations about Fischinger's use of space and the role of abstraction in his work.

Copyright 1998–2004 Fred Collopy. This document was last updated on 11/1/05; it is located at RhythmicLight.com.