Aidan Lutz, 26, Performance Artist & Liquid Light Artist
If you’re not sure what a liquid light artist is, you’re not alone.
It is chemistry meets art meets engineering. At its simplest, it’s a color emulsion of moving liquid light.
It’s not new. It was born out of necessity in the late 50’s. Dark theaters, lit only with lamps lacked the color necessary to light the stage. Projectors with colored transparencies were introduced to add light, dimension, and mood. Once pioneered, it got huge, eventually seeping into San Francisco’s summer of love in the late sixties and became standard in Grateful Dead’s tours.
Does Aidan look like your typical Dead Head?
Probably not, but that is because liquid light art has broken its boundaries and oozed out into society.
Aidan’s Start
Aidan started doing light shows in Portland, Oregon in 2018, but art was always a part of his life. His mother saw it in him from an early age and put him in art school. She watched him do things differently than other kids and she knew his craving for authenticity would need to be expressed through art. His foundation was in traditional art – painting and sculpture – but he found his niche in liquid lightshows.
He was first introduced to the art form at Desert Daze – a fringe, underground music festival with bands from all over the world that paired with psychedelic visual artists. (Sounds amazing…let’s not tell the celebrities about it.)
Tools & Show
Only those lucky and old enough, remember the old school projectors used back in the day.
Aidan’s projector is his “bread and butter” – his live tool that is at the heart of his work. You may be picturing the industrial carts they sat on, the whir of the fan, and the snap of the transparencies as they were switched out and layered over one another.
But this is much cooler. The liquid light shows emitting from the projector are paired with live music.
On his projector he mixes oil, water, and alcohol in bowls creating an emulsion. The dyes he chooses create the beautiful colors and he injects movement into the patterns all in cadence with the music as the projector’s mirrors and light flood the venue and crowd with beautiful, colored, moving light.