Gary Panter blog

MEMORABLE LIGHT SHOW

I did a lot of lightshows for visitors in 2001. Sometimes I had help or did them by myself and there was always a little ritual involved.
Leading the visitors to the front door of the minitheater set up in a room on the same floor as my studio.
Giving the visitors flyers. A little comic that explained the light show.
Telling them to wait for the tall orange light to come on and that the orange light was a signal for them to enter the darkened minitheater.
Then I left them and went backstage.
Where I was in the dark and worked by flashlight.

There I :
Lit incense.
Turned on many tape players.
Flipped the switch for the orange light that would signal the audience to enter.
Turned on a strobe light with the curtain still down.
Wait for them to feel their way to the seats.
Then I would pull the curtain up and turn of the strobe light and begin to do the various things of which the light show consisted.

Involving:
Flashlights
Mylar
Colored gels
Big stencils
Revolving color wheels
Christmas tree lights
Mirrors
Candles
Mobiles
Plastic Gerbil Balls
Plastic laundry baskets
And so on.
It was a mild entertainment.

One frosty sloshy night Charles Burns drove in from Philadelphia and he came with a group of intrepid light show viewers including his and my friends John Borba ( the namesake of Charles' El Borba character and a pyrotechnic sculptor, Jesse Wolk (Borba's better half and a photographer of weddings), Gary Leib ( underground cartoonist who draws IDIOTLAND with Doug Allen and has TWINKLELAND animation studio. Recently they are getting a lot of attention for AMERICAN SPLENDOR the Pekar movie), John Kuramoto ( a computer artist who works with Gary at TWINKLELAND).

I think that was the whole group. They came in all dripping and it was kind of late. We chatted in my studio for a bit and then I led them to the front door of the minitheater by the tall orange light and went backstage.

Where I got my flashlight and lit the incense and began turning on tape players, all six of them purring and crashing twanging and farting out the divine improvisational sounds of ECSTATIC PEACE and TWISTED VILLAGE recordings, among others. I flipped the switch of the orange light and I could hear the victims giggling and talking away outside. I turned on the strobe lights and waited for them to get settled and then I pulled the nylon strings that raised the curtain. The curtain, if what I am describing is not clear, reveals a stretched vellum rear projection screen mounted in a wall separating the audience from me, backstage, twiddling and adjusting and fighting and dropping little desklamps and gerbil balls for half and hour. I am very active back there. Nothing beyond the rotating color wheels was motorized so if I want motion back there I had to keep swinging things and stopping things. I admit the whole thing is pretty goofy, but have a lot of fun and try to do a good show.

How do you know if you are doing a good show? Well, I've practiced a lot and walked around front of the screen ten thousand times, so I have a pretty good idea what it looks like out there and I can see a faint version of what they are seeing out front, but dimmer than they see it because I am in a room with all kinds of light and they are sitting in a room of total blackness except for the vellum screen between me and them. On which I am trying to shine interesting light and keep it going and changing and trying to interpret the cacophony that is the music into a hypnotic vision-inducing miasma. If I am successful that sometimes happens. This show was going great. I could tell it was one of the best because everything was sorted out and went smoothly, not a tangled mess that many shows became. Anyway I figured that it was time to end the show and not bore them or put them to sleep so I began turning out lights and turning off tape players and turning off more lights and more tape players and then lowering the curtain and turning off the last light. The end. It's quiet and pitch black and I can hear Charles and everyone one talking and tittering and so I feel my way to the front and open the curtain and say (as I always do) "Well, would you like to come back stage and see how the light show is done?"

No one was there.

The orange light had not come on.

They had never come into the theater.

No one had seen the show.

They heard the show start and debated coming in.

But the orange light didn't come on.

So they debated for a long time and thought perhaps that the piece was about not coming in or outsidedness or...something, but out of respect for the art they didn't come in.

When I came out I was in shock.

I had done my best show.

And no one had seen it.

Finally they talked me into doing a show for them that they saw, but I know that it wasn't as good as the show nobody saw.

That's called ...really imposing on your friends.