György Kepes
Works
- Light-Space Modulator (1922-30)
With Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
- Flame Orchard
"Beginning in the early 1800s, the stages of opera houses were lit with gas foot lamps, whose flames appeared on occasion to change shape with the volume and tone of the singers’ voices. CAVS founder György Kepes' Flame Orchard not only investigated this phenomenon, but also did much more. Reporting from the Bienal de Arte Coltejer in Medellín, Colombia, curator Jasia Reichardt compared watching Flame Orchard to watching clouds or the surface of the sea—but they were moving in synchrony with an "extraordinary synthesis of church music and modern jazz."
Flame Orchard consisted of six units like the one seen here, each housing a 2' x 2' x 3" gas container and a sound speaker that vibrated the gas. As composer Paul Earls' music played, the flames vibrated and leap.
See also: Chladni figures.
Literature
- György Kepes, Language of Vision, pp 15-25.
- Marjorie Supovitz, Gyorgy Kepes: The MIT Years 1945-1977, The MIT Press, 1978.
- Interview with Kepes, 1998.
