Looks very similar to the Optikinetics Crystal Pulse product that is sadly no longer commercially available. Pretty niche lighting effect I encountered in the mid 90s. It was outdated even then. https://youtu.be/XuxZ7_lAhK8?si=TT-6WXfT5c4cvJGN
I checked out some of the other videos and their website and this looks really cool. I've attempted liquid light shows with an overhead projector and can never get it to turn out right. These liquid discs look like an easy alternative for a similar effect.
They are excellent for that yes! There are a few people making unofficial wheels too that you can find on eBay.
Here's a discussion about an outdoor called Fruit Salad Light Show that used a bunch of Optikinetics gear for shows in the 90's that might also interest you. https://ozrics.proboards.com/thread/2204/light-show
Another comment mentioned the two projectors in the patent — and based also on the "reminds me on an aurora" mentioned in the article, I suspect it's a kind of slow crossfade between the "slides" that makes the Auroratone more relaxing.
Very cool. I'm not seeing an obvious connection between the audio and the visuals (I do see some kind of differences between the visuals for the organ solo vs. the rest of the song).
I can't believe no one has recreated the machine though. Perhaps someone will now.
I don't think the visuals were derived directly from the audio track played with them in the film. The article has a good description:
> [Stokes’] procedure was to cut a tape recorded melody into short segments and splice the resulting pieces into tape loops. The audio signal from the first loop was sent to a radio transmitter. The radio waves from the radio transmitter were confined to a tube and focused up through a glass slide on which he had placed a chemical mixture. The radio waves would interact with the solution and trigger the formation of the crystals. In this way each slide would develop a shape interpretive of the loop of music it had been exposed to. Each loop, in sequence, would be converted to a slide. Eventually a set of slides would be completed that was the natural interpretation of the complete musical melody.
It's kind of a kaleidoscope where the moving crystals are fused into a solid mass, creating a fixed slide.The energy for fusing the crystals can come from either big lamps (carbon arcs are suggested) or an RF heater. Plus there's an air compressor in there to blow air into the thing to cool the material and stir things up. Then there are two projectors, which take turns displaying two slides.
It belongs to the class of devices for which the technology didn't really exist yet to do it right, but somebody managed to kludge a prototype into working. See "Telharmonium"[1]
Visually it's not that different from a lot of current psychedelic imagery. E.g. the Eurorack video synthesis scene.
The creators most likely took inspiration from their personal experiences smoking reefers (probably too early for psilocybin considering it's 1940s, but possible too!).
"Neo: You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?
Choi: All the time. It's called mescaline, it's the only way to fly"
Isolated in 1896 and synthesized in 1919.
Havelock Ellis described the use of cactus Anhalonium lewinii, or mescal button by Kiowa Indians (New Mexico) in "Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise" (1898).
Aldous Huxley took mescaline for the first time on May 3, 1953 and subsequently wrote about it in Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956).
Jim Morrison co-founded The Doors, named after Huxley's book, in July 1965 in Los Angeles, California. He formed the band with Ray Manzarek, whom he met at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television when they were both students.
Carlos Castaneda, himself a kind of enigma and his books controversial wrote his first book shortly after, "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge," published in 1968,
