Experimental Imagery: Meet The Grandfathers Of VJing, Joshua Light Show

"Expect beautiful images," Josh White of the Joshua Light Show tells us back stage at the Haus Der Kulteren Der Welt in Berlin. The influential experimental music group’s been around for more than four decades and, for the first time in a while, has three performances this year with the Transmediale Festival, their first time playing in Germany. If you're not already familiar with them, you probably know what their work looks like—they’re responsible for the prevailing aesthetic of VJ concert visuals, the psychedelic, swirling, organic, colorful lights that set the visual atmosphere of music performances from the 60s to today.

In the 60s, the Joshua Light Show held residency at the infamous Fillmore East in New York and played with just about every big name you can think of from the era. Their visuals accompanied musicians like Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Doors and The Who, just to name a few. But unlike Andy Warhol's The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a similar series of multimedia events within the art circles of New York, the Joshua Light Show was resolutely part of the music scene. Founding member Joshua White studied theater and film at Carnegie Tech and became interested in the potential for light to transform a performance venue. He transferred his eye for ambient light and drama to the music of the times.

Their residency at the Fillmore East allowed Joshua Light Show to set up an incredible light rig that hung quite literally off the back wall. Each artist had one well-practiced instrument and seven or so of these performers would sit inside the rig. You could call their approach to the light show something like "visual jazz." Their unique processes are still used today when they perform.

The Color Wheel, for instance, is a hula-hoop that holds color gels and spins in front of a light. The effect is a multi-colored strobe that looks a bit like a festive police car siren. Another technique is a mixture of colored oil and water. The simple inability of the liquids to mix produces swirling organic compositions when light is passed through them. This technique, called “Liquid Light,” is a signature effect of the light show.

The group is a highlight of this year’s Transmediale Festival and it seems to be a good fit. Transmediale is in its 25th year and, for a festival dedicated to technology and art, that's a pretty long time. As they reach this benchmark in their own history, they’ve decided to look back at some of the artists and musicians who shaped the current community, like the Joshua Light Show. The festival’s chosen theme this year, In/compatible, celebrates this connection of past and present as a kind of coming together of the dissimilar and the Joshua Light Show exemplifies happy incompatibilities in many ways. They pioneered the idea of live visuals for performance, paving the way for VJs and changing the way performers interact with space and light.

But they aren't interested in getting too nostalgic—the Joshua Light Show prefers to work with contemporary performers rather than dwell on the past. Still reigning over his ensemble, White has put together a new team in recent years but still uses all the old techniques. Their process is somewhat incompatible, too—they definitely use technology and lots of it, but they know the gear so intimately and intuitively that the light takes on organic, human characteristics.

Each night at the Haus Der Kulteren Der Welt, a huge crowd forms in anticipation of the shows where each night the Joshua Light Show are joined by a different musician. It’s important to note that by today’s standards, the performance is pretty analog. It’s easy to forget that these guys are from another era. There are no lasers, no computer-generated imagery blasted at you from a 5,000-lumen projector (this came decades later). Their light show is homespun. The gear is mostly handmade or quirky reinventions of machinery that are "performed" backstage by the orchestrated group of artists. Joshua White acts as the group's director, conducting the light by revealing beams in tune to the music. He often does not even practice before a set, emphasizing the importance of listening to the music in order to play a good light show.

On the final night of Transmediale, the group plays with Manuel Gottsching, another performance legend from a slightly more recent generation, and the visuals are outstanding. If they didn't practice for this, they sure fooled us—everything is perfectly timed, perfectly synchronized. Seeing the colored oils blossom and dissipate made us wonder if we were having the same reaction that those audiences at Fillmore East must have had. The beauty of the natural movement mixed with the warmth of the electric light is just as appealing and transfixing over fifty years later.