Prometheus
Prometheus research institute (SKB Prometei) was founded by Bulat M. Galeyev in 1962 in Kazan, Soviet Union. Began as an amateur student construction department and later became the joint research institute "Prometheus" of A.N. Tupolev State Technical University of Kazan and Tatarstan Academy of Sciences. The group combined kinetic electric light art with music. It developed several music-light instruments, including Prometheus-1 (1962; used to conduct the first in USSR performance of Scriabin's "Prometheus", including lighting part in author's transcription)[1], Prometheus-2 (1963); in 1963-1964 used to perform visuals to the music by A.N.Scriabin, M.P.Musorgsky, N.A.Rimsky-Korsakov, I.F.Stravinsky, F.Z.Yarullin)[2], Crystall (1966; during 1966-1970 used to perform visuals to the compositions Dark Flame by A.N.Scriabin, The Structures by P.Boulez, The Tears by A.Nemtin, The Firework by K.Debussy)[3], and Prometheus-3[4]. In their public performances the motion and the colour of projected light images were manually controlled in an attempt to correlate them with either the individual qualities or the themes or with both of these aspects of music. The group believes that the manual control of kinetic images to obtain such correlations offers more hope for this type of artistic medium than audio-kinetic art using electronic and electro-mechanical devices to control the correlations automatically. The Group organizes periodic All-Soviet Union Conferences on 'Light and Music' (third was held from 27 June to 4 July 1975 at Kazan).
Works
Articles
- B. M. Galeyev, "Music-Kinetic Art Medium: On the Work of the Group 'Prometei' (SKB), Kazan, U.S.S.R.", Leonardo, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1976), pp 177-182.
- Paulo Quadros, "Synaesthesia - The Correspondences Between Sound and Light and Colour-music (Skb Prometei)", 1984.
- B. M. Galeyev, "The Fire of "Prometheus": Music-Kinetic Art Experiments in the USSR", Leonardo, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1988), pp 383-396.
- B. M. Galeyev, "Light-Music Today: The development of Scriabin's Ideas (on the example of Kazan school of new art)", Transactions of Scriabin Museum, Moscow, 1998, No 3, pp. 52-71.
- B. M. Galeyev, "Institute "Prometei", Kazan, Russia (1962-1997)" 1997.
- Brian Droitcour, "The Prometheus Institute and the Work of Bulat Galeyev" 2009.
http://prometheus.kai.ru/
Soviet videocube (Kazan, 1980) connecting Thereminvox