# Thomas Wilfred [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wilfred) (1889–1968) ## Description Danish-American artist and inventor of Lumia, a slow-evolving art of projected coloured light performed and composed on his self-built instrument, the Clavilux, beginning in the 1920s; he refused to have Lumia performances filmed, believing no reproduction process could capture their continuity of motion. ## Key Tags #visual-music #lumia #color-organ #light-art #tool-builder ## Essential Works - [Lumia Suite, Op. 158](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wilfred) (1963-64) - his major late Lumia work, held in MoMA's permanent collection as a continuously operating light composition - Clavilux touring performances (1920s) - live Lumia performances that brought colour-light art to concert audiences across the US and Europe ## Details Trained as a singer and lutenist before building the first Clavilux in 1919, controlling projected colored light through keyboard-like manual controls in real time, much like an organ. Believed Lumia's continuous, non-repeating motion could never be adequately captured on film, so most of his performances survive only in photographs and written accounts — with the exception of his few late works, like *Lumia Suite*, built to run continuously rather than be performed and recorded. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Visual Music]] - Lumia is one of the foundational bodies of work in the visual music / colour-light performance tradition - [[Light Art]] - his self-composing light instruments anticipate later generations of light-based installation art ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Lumia]] - originated the practice and coined the term, building the Clavilux as its dedicated performance instrument ### Collaborators %% none yet %% ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements - Art Institute of Light (founder) - organization he founded to promote Lumia as a fine art in its own right ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Wilfred, Thomas. "Light and the Artist." *The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism* 5, no. 4 (1947). ### Secondary Sources Bibliography ### Cited In - [[Light-Play and the Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film]] (240 - Primary Sources) - discusses Wilfred's refusal to have Lumia performances filmed and his writing on light-space-time.