Demystifying body in lumia via embodied simulation: lumia after Thomas Wilfred

This paper reviews Thomas Wilfred’s 200 page unpublished document, ‘Lumia, the Art of Light’ and shares the researcher’s findings to contextualise his recently embarked PhD project at London’s Royal College of Art. The researcher argues that Lumia was a unique art form of light, strictly born within the context of colour music; therefore Wilfred’s claim that Lumia is the art of light as its purest form is effectively false. The vision of Lumia demystifies a bi-directional (or uni-directional) relationship between sound and light by rejecting any analogy theories, and promotes electrically charged silence as a counterpart to sound.

Overall, Lumia was an independent art form of light to be performed at a concert hall, and the art worked towards the concept of second field. The vision of Lumia sets out specific rules, but Lumia’s ambiguous relationship with music makes it difficult for one to label it. The researcher interprets Wilfred’s vision of Lumia into a research question: ‘Can electric light art evoke a perception of music without sound, and without establishing any analogies between sound and light in a performance context?’ and asks a further question in response: ‘Does body matter?’ The researcher suggests the concept of embodied simulation can be a new way to move our research on Lumia forward from Wilfred’s style of light art and his Clavilux development to materialising a post-Wilfred generation of Lumia art.