Moreover, lumia art constitutes the promise of an evolving design science integrated architecturally into the fabric of daily life: certainly the true "city of light" has yet to be realized. Recent trends in the application of advanced technology to what might be called "functional aesthetics" indicate a transformation in urban design, the gradual convergence of functionality and beauty, the mundane and the mysterious.
Henry Jacobs (left) and Jordan Belson at Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, California, for Vortex Concerts.
The Vortex Concerts
The legendary Vortex Concerts conducted by Henry Jacobs and Jordan Belson at Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park from 1957 to 1960 were quintessential examples of lumia art integrated with sound in an intermedia environment. By present standards one could not ask for a more perfect setting. "Simply being in that dome was a holy experience," said Belson. "The entire theatre was like an exquisite instrument." And Jacobs recalls: "It was such an absurdly perfect situation that we just stopped altogether after we left the planetarium; when you begin with the ultimate there's nowhere else to go."
Vortex began in May, 1957, as a series of experimental and ethnic music concerts from tapes owned by Jacobs, a poet and composer of electronic music. Within a few weeks, however, he was joined by his friend Belson, and Vortex became an experiment in visual and acoustical space. The sixty-foot dome was surrounded at its perime-ter by thirty-six loudspeakers clustered in equally-spaced stations of three speakers each. There were two large bass speakers on either side and one at the zenith of the dome. Speakers were installed in the center of the room, bringing the total close to fifty sound sources. "The acoustics were very unusual," Belson remarked. "Very hushed, and you could hear any sound no matter how far away, as th ough it were right behind you, because sound carried over the dome."
The planetarium engineering staff installed a substantial amount of equipment especially for Vortex, including an audio keyboard with controls for addressing individual speakers or spinning sounds rotationally about the room— thus the title of Vortex. In addition, Belson supervised the installation of special interference-pattern projectors that were added to the hundreds of projection devices already assembled. "One of my greatest pleasures," said Belson, "was working with the star machine at a point when the entire dome was bathed in a kind of deep red. As the color began to fade away, there was a point when it overlapped with this beautiful starry sky; it was a breathtaking and dramatic moment.
"We could tint the space any color we wanted to. Just being able to control the darkness was very important. We could get it down to jet black, and then take it down another twenty-five degrees lower than that, so you really got that sinking-in feeling. Also we experimented with projecting images that had no motion-picture frame lines; we masked and filtered the light, and used images that didn't touch the frame lines. It had an uncanny effect: not only was the image free of the frame, but free of space somehow. It just hung there three-dimensionally because there was no frame of reference. I used films— Hy Hirsh's oscilloscope films, some images James Whitney was working on for Yantra, and some things which later went into Allures— plus strobes, star projectors, rotational sky projectors, kaleidoscope projectors, and four special dome-projectors for interference patterns. We were able to project images over the entire dome, so that things would come pouring down from the center, sliding along the walls. At times the whole place would seem to reel."
Planetarium projector shown equipped with two interference-pattern projectors (top right) for Vortex Concerts.
Sound-to-image relationships amounted to counterpoint rather than what Jacobs calls "Mickey Mouse synchronization." Vortex did not simply project sound into space, but employed dimensionality, direction, aural perspective, and speed of movement as musical resources. "Jordan controlled the performance with parameters of the time an image would begin, the amount of brightness, speed of rotation, and speed of enlargement. I would control the loudness of the sound, the equalization of the sound, and the spatiality of the sound." Music ranged from Stockhausen, Berio, and Ussachevsky to Balinese and Afro-Cuban polyrhythms, set against the geometrical imagery characterized by Allures. Jacobs and Belson conducted approximately one-hundred Vortex concerts, including two weeks at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1960 the planetarium withdrew its support and Vortex ended without ever realizing its full potential.
Jud Yalkut: Dream Reel
Jud Yalkut has collaborated in dozens of intermedia performances throughout the United States since 1965, when he became resident filmmaker for USCO at their commune in Garnerville, New York. As filmmaker first and intermedia artist second, Yalkut displays a sense of control and orchestration that is the result of working closely with superimpositions within the film frame. Thus in the superimpositions of multiple-projection environments he is able to control not only the spatial and temporal dimensions of a performance, but the graphic composition and integrity of the images as well. The result is a "film performance" in the fullest sense.
In the spring of 1969 Yalkut joined with Yukihisa Isobe to present Dream Reel, a mixed-media performance in Isobe's "Floating Theatre"— a parachute canopy thirty-two to fifty feet in diameter anchored by nylon lines to the floor of the performance area. The Floating Theatre is elevated above and surrounds the audience, using air-flow principles and centrally located fans. In effect, it is a portable hemispheric projection theatre utilizing both front and rear multiple-projection techniques.
Dream Reel is divided into three sections: Paikpieces, Festival Mix, and Mixmanifestations. Paikpieces is an environmental tribute to Nam June Paik, incorporating the video-film collaborations between Yalkut and Paik discussed earlier. Performance time is approximately fifteen minutes, set against the tape composition Mano-Dharma No. 8 by Takehisa Kosugi (1967) for two RF oscillators and one receiver. Equipment involves four to five 16mm. projectors including one with sound on film, four carousel slide projectors, and a stereo tape system. The contrast of Paik's electronic imagery with the airy buoyance of the silky enclosure produces an ethereal, evanescent atmosphere.
Festival Mix is a multiple-projection interpretation of the 1968 University of Cincinnati Spring Arts Festival, originally presented as an eleven-channel, multi-media "feedback" mix as the final performance of that ten-day festival. In Dream Reel it involves three 16mm. projectors, four carousel slide projectors, and a four-track stereo tape system on which is played Festival Mix Tape by Andy Joseph and Jeni Engel. Sounds and images include those of Peter Kubelka, Charles Lloyd, Bruce Baillie, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Ken Jacobs, Hermann Nitsch's Orgy-Mystery Theatre, Paul Tulley, The Fugs, Jonas Mekas, and the MC-5. "I was unnerved and numb from the tremendous impact this had on my senses," one person commented after the performance.