Liquid Light

Coloured liquids, lava, ferrofluid and sand on your screen, in the style of the 1960s liquid light shows. Pour with a finger or the mouse, or let it follow the music.

Open Liquid Light

This is the app itself, running here and changing its look every 12 seconds.

Where it comes from

In 1965 Bill Ham started projecting coloured liquids behind the bands at the Red Dog Saloon in Nevada, and soon at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. Within a few years a light show was part of every psychedelic concert. The Joshua Light Show was the house show at Bill Graham's Fillmore East in New York, and liquid light played behind Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Doors, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

American shows were built around the overhead projector. The operators poured dyed water, oil and inks into large clock cover glasses, laid a second glass on top and pressed, rocked and swirled them by hand, in time with the music. The projector's heat kept the liquids moving, and no two nights looked alike.

Liquid Light brings those liquids to a screen, and adds other analog wonders from the same years and earlier: the lava lamp (Edward Craven Walker, 1963), ferrofluid (Steve Papell at NASA, also 1963), and the sand figures that Ernst Chladni drew on a bowed metal plate in 1787.

A few looks

Each picture opens that look in the app, where it keeps moving.

Blue, yellow and white paint swirled into feathered edges Marbled paintPaint floats on thick size, and each new drop pushes the last into rings.Open this look Orange and yellow wax blobs rising through red liquid Lava lampWax warms at the bottom, rises, cools at the top and sinks again.Open this look White sand gathered into a round, star-like figure on a dark plate Sand and soundSand on a humming plate draws a new figure for every note, as in Chladni's experiments.Open this look Grey water rippled into a net of small cells with rings around them Sound on waterA tone makes the water stand still in a net of small cells, with rings running out to the rim.Open this look Black ferrofluid throwing long spikes on an orange light FerrofluidMagnetic liquid drifts like wax, then throws spikes when the field rises.Open this look Oil and ink in magenta and yellow, mirrored into an eight-part flower KaleidoscopeOil and water under eight mirrors, turning slowly.Open this look

What you can do

Further reading