Liquid Light

The antithesis of the predictably programmed bursts of colored light that fill the stage of an average rock concert, the Joshua Light Show’s improvised rainbows of swirling abstractions include layer upon layer of floating bubbles, pulsating sunbursts and bulbous ornamentation that create an entrancing psychedelic fantasia. An early pioneer of “liquid light” shows, multimedia artist Joshua White is best known for his artistry in the 1960s at the legendary New York venue Fillmore East, where he fashioned hallucinatory explosions of illuminated color for The Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix, among others.

With the resurgence of interest in psychedelia in general and light shows specifically as an art form, White’s accomplishments have enjoyed a much deserved reexamination and been exhibited recently at the Whitney, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and Tate Liverpool. This week, the Joshua Light Show takes up residence at Issue Project Room for four nights of improvisation and experimentation with light and music. Though White turned his attention to television shortly after pulling off a massive lighting spectacle at Woodstock, he returned to creating light shows, primarily as an art form, in the 1990s. His strategies have evolved somewhat with the digital age, but White’s light shows are always an open-ended improvised responses to live music.

“Light shows are primarily abstract and ambiguous,” White says. “They always avoid the obvious…and are open to interpretation.”

Though White has been the driving force behind the Joshua Light Show since its inception in the 1960s, he now considers it an umbrella for a number of video and light artists that he leads with his longtime collaborator, Bec Stupak. White’s association with Stupak, a video artist and re-mixer, has facilitated the incorporation of digital techniques into the show’s repertoire.

Early on, liquid light shows involved an overhead projector and a transparent container filled with colored oil and water along with various items including, but not limited to, color wheels, stage-lighting gels, slide and film projectors and mirrors. The original Joshua Light Show expanded on these elements with industrial lighting techniques and the use of a rear projection screen to explore the limitless possibilities of light. Now, Stupak says, the Joshua Light Show includes live oil mixing, video and an array of “sparkly objects” and gadgets that reflect light, shoot light or are illuminated.

“It’s an amazing repertoire because he’s been building it since the ‘60s,” Stupak says of White’s arsenal. “[His studio] always looks like a mad scientist’s laboratory.”

The two typically work as a team behind a giant projection screen during shows. For instance, while White is mixing oils on an overhead projector, Stupak will run VJ equipment and mix video. Because of an utter devotion to improvisation, they take into account the aesthetic of the musicians who will perform on a given evening but avoid anything resembling a specific plan.

“It really is about reacting to the music in the space,” Stupak says. “That’s the magic. When people realize that the visuals are reacting to the music, they have a sort of visceral reaction…Because it’s engaging their eyes as well as their ears, it creates a synesthetic moment.”

The residency at Issue Project Room was organized and produced in collaboration with Nick Hallett, who curated the Joshua Light Show’s first event since 1969 at The Kitchen in April of last year. Hallett worked with the Issue Project Room to select musicians for the residency who, though their genres diverge dramatically, share a psychedelic sensibility that is sonically evocative of the Joshua Light Show’s lush imagery.

“I definitely try to identify characteristics in music that are particularly visual or theatrical or have a dramatic flair,” Hallett says of his selection process.

The residency begins Wednesday night with a quartet of experimental improvisers, who, though they have worked with one another in numerous musical permutations, have never before played as a foursome. Ikue Mori and Marina Rosenfeld, wielding an array of electronics, will band together with Zeena Parkins on electric harp and Lee Ranaldo on electric guitar for their debut as a quartet. The following night tabla player Pandit Samir Chatterjee and sitarist K.V. Mahabala will explore North Indian raga and tala.

Friday night Spiritual Unity, a quartet comprising Roy Campbell on trumpet, Henry Grimes on bass, Marc Ribot on guitar and Chad Taylor on drums, will perform an Albert Ayler–inspired free-jazz set. The residency concludes with experimental electronics from Soft Circle (Hisham Bharoocha) and Invisible Conga People (Justin Simon and Eric Tsai).

Each evening will offer contributions from various live-cinema artists—Seth Kirby, Zach Layton, and Mighty Robot A/V Squad among them. White enjoys these collaborations particularly because he is able to share the techniques he has developed and impart an understanding of the power of working with light extemporaneously. “What I want to pass on is the concept that you can improvise with light,” White explains. “And the enemy of improvisation with light is programming.”   May 28-31. Issue Project Room, 232 3rd St. (at 3rd Ave.), B’klyn, 718-330-0313; 8, $20-$30.