How Not to Repeat an Image

George Stadnik encountered Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia at MoMA in 1968. Nearly six decades later, Stadnik’s work still turns on the same problem: how to make an image that does not repeat.

In October 1968, during his first semester at Syracuse University, George Stadnik went to MoMA and encountered Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia Suite, Op. 158. He sat with it for more than an hour. The work was silent except for the low rumble of the subway below the museum; its colours and forms kept moving, but never returned in quite the same way. Stadnik went back repeatedly until the installation was dismantled in the mid-1970s. He describes that first encounter simply: it established his purpose as an artist.

Over the decades that followed, the means kept changing. Stadnik worked with film and video, theatrical lighting, opto-mechanical light boxes, direct-exposure Cibachrome prints and live performance. Beginning in the late 1990s, he built virtual Lumia machines with optical simulation software. In 2013, he moved away from digital work and towards physical materials, sunlight, air and movement. The technologies changed; the interest in variation did not.

Wilfred had conceived Lumia as an autonomous art made with light and time. His machines could mechanise movement while controlling repetition and variation. Stadnik carried those principles into natural light, spectral colour, physical forces and perceptual ambiguity.

In his recent Natural Light Lumia works, the image depends on sunlight, air, surroundings, the viewer’s position and the viewer’s own perception. It cannot be separated entirely from the conditions in which it appears. Stadnik describes these works as personal, non-linear movies that never repeat.

You have worked with Lumia since 1968, yet the medium remains unfamiliar to many people. What is Lumia to you, and what distinguishes it from other forms of light art or moving-image media?

The term “Lumia” was coined by Thomas Wilfred. It describes a methodology for creating moving imagery with the attributes of light and time. Early in his career (1920s–30s), Wilfred focused on developing performance instruments that produced moving imagery through direct, real-time manipulation of physical lenses, motors and tungsten filament lamps. Simultaneously, he looked for commercial applications in theater and architecture and developed instruments that projected moving scenery. He published his aesthetic theories about an independent, eighth fine art — Lumia.

Late in his career (1940s–60s), he changed his focus to create automated machines that played his compositions. He exhibited his Clavilux Juniors as works of fine art at MoMA and the Howard Wise Gallery.

The secret of Wilfred’s Lumia is his understanding of mechanizing movement applied to control repetition and variation. His Clavilux compositions automated sequences that ranged from 15 minutes to infinity in terms of repetition and variation.

I believe that Lumia is a methodology for creating objects, installations and performances using the attributes of light and time. I have expanded Wilfred’s parameters to include natural light, pure spectral color, randomness based on natural forces, and manipulating binocular vision triggers to achieve perceptual ambiguity (pareidolia, apophenia).

Lumia composition is visible throughout light art, entertainment and commercial visual communication media, although it’s usually not identified as such and may be called production design, visual design, etc. In the digital realm, generative imagery begins to approach the idea of an infinite cycle. The most recognizable version of Lumia today is the image of a light-refraction caustic. This web-like refracted image of light is the common definition of Lumia.

In my practice, Lumia is a composition methodology that transforms the attributes of light, time and physics to create a perception of a time, a place or an object that inspires and triggers evocative events, places or emotions in participating viewers’ mind’s eye.

Your engagement with Lumia began when you encountered Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia Suite, Op. 158 at MoMA in 1968. What were you studying or making at the time, and what do you remember seeing in Wilfred’s work that redirected your attention so decisively?

That visit to MoMA in October of 1968 established my purpose as an artist. It was my first semester at Syracuse University. I was hearing about and seeing so many different possibilities for creating art. Experiencing Opus 158 cleared the noise and set my course into uncharted territory.

What I experienced in that dark space on the basement level was an ethereal, mysteriously moving energy that created fantastical images, colors, shifting shapes, and suspended sensations of time. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, anywhere, at any time. I sat there for more than an hour, mesmerized, while the world stopped and transformed. It never repeated. It was completely silent, except for the low rumble of the subway a hundred feet below.

I went back many times after that, until the exhibit was dismantled in the mid-1970s. In the late 1990s, I had the pleasure of meeting the primary collector of Lumia in the U.S., and we have been friends ever since.

You received your BFA from Syracuse University’s Experimental Studios in 1972, when video, electronic media and new relationships between art and technology were beginning to take shape. What was Experimental Studios like when you entered it? Who were the teachers, artists and fellow students working around you, and how did that environment influence your early experiments with Lumia?

The Experimental Studios Program opened all the courses on campus to art students. We could choose which classes would spark our imaginations to create our art. This program included traditional art classes in skillset development and historical context.

I selected professors and programs in film, forestry, industrial design, economics and electronic music. My teachers included Lee Dussel, Jack Nelson, Jerry Malinowski and Franklin Morris. Fellow students included Bill Viola and David Ross, among others.

My projects included 16 mm film and Portapack video production. I created and exhibited multimedia installations, performances and environments. All of these used elements of Lumia with theatrical lighting or projections. I also created sculptures using fiberglass casting, Plexiglas and inflatable structures with integrated lighting.

Looking back, how did the approaches to electronic and time-based images developing around you differ from the path you were beginning to follow through Lumia?

From memory, I recall that the Portapack work at that time generally focused on a documentary context and the novelty of this new form of direct TV production (Peter Campus). Ron Hayes at WGBH was an inspiration with his “Tristan and Isolde Composition.”

In 1975, I received a grant from the WGBH New Television Workshop to create Lumia using the Paik Abe Synthesizer. The result was titled Primordial Soup.

Between 1970 and 1975, I created laser and white-light performance instruments for avant-garde festivals in NYC. From 1976–1985, I set up a Lumiagraph Studio to create direct-to-print still-image compositions using Cibachrome print film. These were created for magazine covers, corporate interiors and fine art one-off prints. I had my first solo show at Terrain Gallery in NYC in 1978. It was an exhibit of large-scale Lumiagraphs.

Wilfred regarded Lumia as an autonomous “eighth art,” with light serving as its medium rather than as illumination for something else. Do you share that understanding? Has Lumia established an identity of its own, or does it still occupy a space between painting, sculpture, cinema and music?

Lumia has potential as an autonomous art, as proven by Turrell and Irwin. My work with Joshua White in live light-show performances exemplifies applied Lumia principles. Digital Lumia pieces are standalone animations of optics simulated by a “virtual machine” I built in a computer. Natural light and air compositions are sculptural objects that create moving Lumia compositions using sunlight and air currents.

Over the past 6+ decades, awareness of Lumia has increased and it is growing in prominence as an independent art form. It is the composition methodology underpinning visual music, special effects and ambient lighting design and other visual art disciplines.

For more than thirty years, you created opto-mechanical light boxes. During that period, you invented the Photon Guitar; in the late 1990s, you began building virtual Lumia machines with optical simulation software; and since 2014, you have created Natural Light Lumia stabiles and mobiles using optically reactive materials. Do these mark successive periods in your practice, or do the different methods still coexist? What prompted the transitions between them?

Each of these is part of the evolutionary flow of my work. The tools, processes and skills remain the same. New materials, techniques and inspirations that cause enhancements, directional changes or new combinations are parts of the evolution in my work.

I found opportunities to experiment during my 45-year product design and marketing career. From 1973 to 1976, I designed toys. I designed decorative fiber-optic lighting from 1979 to 1983. As an event marketing manager, I worked with advanced computer graphics systems from 1984 to 1995. These work experiences provided inspiration for analog Lumiagraphs and the Photon Guitar. My work in commercial computer graphics inspired the idea to create virtual Lumia machines and render out animated compositions. Flame is one example, available on Vimeo.

In 2013, I abandoned digital and started creating analog Lumia. This change resulted from a revelation about the limits and lack of differentiation in creating original art with digital technology. Everything ends up on a screen and has a set of limitations in frame rate, resolution and color palette. Fundamentally, a digital art creation is a simulation of the real world. However, I still use digital tools for simulating complex optical configurations and for engineering component parts.

You invented the Photon Guitar in 1979, and a US patent for its light-pattern-generating system was granted in 1984. How was the instrument played, and why did you call it a “guitar”? Was it conceived as a continuation of Wilfred’s Clavilux, as an instrument for visual music, or as something different from both?

The Photon Guitar is a manual instrument. One hand controls color change by rotating color wheels. The other hand manipulates a bundle of optical fibers through a kaleidoscope lens.

The player controls color changes, moving patterns of dots, and dynamic positioning of the projection within the available performance space. The shape of the instrument is similar to a guitar and is worn by the player in a similar way.

It was conceived as a personal kaleidoscope projector. It carries the idea of Wilfred’s performance Clavilux instruments forward, using the technology of the time (fiber optics and mercury-halogen arc lamps).

Do you still perform with the Photon Guitar, and what became of the original instrument? Is there anything it allowed you to do through physical gesture and live performance that your digital compositions and Natural Light Lumia Constructs cannot?

I still perform, but rarely. The lamp technology is no longer available, and I only have a limited number of spare bulbs. As far as extant guitars, I have one working guitar of the arc-lamp version. I have one spare-parts guitar of the arc-lamp version. There are four halogen “home” version guitars in private collections, all in the US.

The ability of the player to respond to music and the ability to dynamically move the projected image anywhere within the space, spontaneously, are missed. The weight and heat of the instrument are not missed.

The digital simulations are linear fixed-duration events. The Natural Light Compositions offer a viewer the opportunity to create a personal visionary experience that is nonlinear, and of infinite duration and variation.

When you began building virtual Lumia machines through optical simulation, which qualities of your opto-mechanical practice could be preserved? What could not be carried into virtual form?

All the physical qualities are preserved, within the limits of resolution, frame rate and color palette. However, there are positioning and configuration properties that are impossible to achieve in the real world. These include the absence of gravity and the ability to place the recording point of view anywhere within the optical chain. These attributes can only exist in the digital realm.

What drew you towards natural light and physical materials?

The potential of working with the full color spectrum of sunlight. The astronomical scale of day/night and seasons. The range of potential in randomized movement (non-repetitive and variable) in air and water.

How does a Natural Light Lumia Construct produce an image, and which material and optical decisions determine what we see?

An NLLC begins with an arranged and layered configuration of materials that react with the attributes of light. These attributes include opacity, transparency, reflection, refraction, dispersion, diffraction and interference.

The materials are attached in different ways to a structure or “container.” Attachment may be stationary or it may move in response to moving air or water. Momentum and inertia affect the attachment, as do direction of rotation and range of motion.

The viewing participant creates the image or cycle with their eyes and body movement. The participant’s eyes become a stereoscopic camera. Their perception/imagination embellishes their visual experience. They control what they imagine, how long the experience takes place, and what they remember.

The physical structure, its reflections, movement, etc. can be recorded by the participant as a still image or video. In this case, the recording becomes a linear two-dimensional simulation of the actual participant’s physical experience.

Wilfred believed that Lumia should be experienced in silence. Your own practice has included the Photon Guitar, audiovisual compositions, live performance and collaborations. How do you understand the relationship between Lumia and sound?

A color organ assigns color to pitch and brightness to volume. In my current work, there is no direct relationship between sight and sound. The relationship is perceptual. That connection is usually manifested in a transitional way, such as corresponding visual changes in sync with musical tempo or rhythm. Concrete imagery can create a literal connection to music.

Sunlight passing through glass can produce an unexpected field of colour without an artist’s intervention. At what point does an optical event become a Lumia composition?

My creative process is a three-dimensional, iterative, reactive whirlpool. There are elements that I can control; elements that react to them; and forces that operate independently on the overall composition.

At the whirlpool’s edge, exploration of optical events begins. Essentially, I play with materials, geometries and modifying processes at a small scale. At some point, inspiration kicks in, and I begin developing the piece. I modify and control material, positioning, shaping, textures, etc. These modifications react to the natural forces that are constantly changing the original optical event. The viewer adds their own discoveries to the composition. At this point, the optical event is realized as Lumia, at the center of the whirlpool.

In a construction that changes with its surroundings, the time of day and the viewer’s position, what can you compose in advance, and what do you leave to light, movement and chance?

I create the shape of the container, determine its scale and determine its placement in the environment. Like a painting or sculpture, I create points of engagement and exploration within the space. For example; a rhythm of shapes and color juxtapositions. In addition, I create dimensional illusions that play with viewers’ binocular vision.

Positioning and layering of materials, along with embossing and raising, can cause variations in the way perceived images reach the retina. These variations result in illusions of normal 3D, and unusual dimensionality outside the normal scope of 3D that are perceived in the participant’s mind’s eye.

These creative and construction decisions, combined with a constantly changing reflected environment, produce a magical space and time. Because their imagination is engaged, they create their own impressions. Natural Light Lumia Compositions can be thought about as personal, non-linear movies that never repeat.

In a work that continually changes, where does the artwork reside: in the physical construction, in the images it produces, or in the time the viewer spends with it? If such a work enters a collection, what exactly does its owner acquire, and what must be preserved for it to remain the same work?

The artwork resides in all three states, simultaneously. The participant chooses how they experience the work, how they record it internally or externally and what they remember from each encounter with it. The physical object/container is the acquisition to be preserved. The work adapts to the environment it’s in.

Natural Light Lumia Composition No. 32

You recently sent me an image of what appears to be a Natural Light Lumia construction still in progress. Could you tell us about this particular work: what it is called, how it is made, what stage it has reached, and whether it belongs to an ongoing series or was conceived for a particular setting or commission?

Natural Light Lumia Composition No. 32. It is inspired by the exploration of a simultaneous convex/concave optical event and is housed in a treated wood frame with an external, weatherproof, continuous clear Mylar membrane. Inside is a layered configuration of optically reactive materials. It is intended to be suspended from a single anchor point, outdoors, with the vertical center positioned at approximately eye level.

It currently has the diffraction layer installed.

It is part of my current ongoing series, and I have applied for several opportunities to place it in a greenhouse or sunroom environment in 2027.

Other works from the series have also been shown recently. No. 30 is on view until November this year in the North Bennington Outdoor Sculpture Show (NBOSS 26). No. 31 is included in The Independent Thinkers Exhibit at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery, New York, from September 3 to 30. No. 29, Seasons, was shown at NBOSS 24 and later at St. Johns Village Church in New York from March 2025 through April 2026.

Large-scale digital projections, generative systems and AI-driven installations have made changing fields of light and colour increasingly familiar. How, if at all, has this affected the way audiences understand Lumia, and distinguish optically generated Lumia from screen-based imagery?

Immersive visual color music, VFX, ambient meditation environments, color healing, glitch video, video feedback, moiré effects, laser shows, drone shows, etc. are becoming ubiquitous and pervasive. Lumia composition methodology is applied in the design process for these productions. It may be called something else, but it’s there nonetheless.

In the production environment, the development and presentation platforms are primarily digital simulations of analog optical principles and the laws of physics. The completed productions are always perfect, as designed and consistent as demanded by media distribution channels. There are few, if any, experiential opportunities for spontaneity, surprise or imaginative discovery. Every pixel is programmed on a fixed frame rate, resolution and color palette.

Composition with the vagaries of full-spectrum natural light and the chaotic randomness of physical forces are the ingredients that differentiate Lumia as an imagination-inspiration medium.