In 1968, pioneering artist, musician, and inventor Thomas Wilfred sat down with Patricia Marx at the WNYC studios to discuss his life and work. Wilfred died about a month before this program aired on WNYC.

Thomas Wilfred was the inventor of the Clavilux, a device that operated much like a pipe organ, but instead of emitting sounds, the operator could slide keys to cast color projections on a screen. Debuting in the 1920s, Wilfred's machine and accompanying color 'conversations' have had a lasting influence on artists working today. Remember Terrance Malick's Tree of Life? Wilfred's Opus 161 was used during key moments in the film.

I also had to make a living.  I found out I had a good baritone voice and I liked old songs.  So I found a lute...and I began to practice and sing unusual old songs to the lute and that took and I made money on it.  So I would go out through winter and sing until I had funds enough, then spend the summer experimenting until I went broke then go back and sing some more.

Thomas Wilfred Lute Performance, 1914.

After years of performing, Wilfred gave up music up to fully commit to building his light machines.  In 1919, he constructed a laboratory in Huntington, NY and for the next six years he developed an instrument from which one could 'play' light, controlling its form and motion using a keyboard-like console. His first public performance was in New York and Wilfred compared it to a Bach fugue: the forms were rigid in composition, rather uniform in movement, and he played from a strict set notations that resembled a classical score. Later on, Wilfred would loosen up his performances by allowing a more improvisational style.

These light performances were rooted in Wilfred's well-considered artistic conceits.  He had studied traditional art earlier in life but was ultimately unconvinced that practices like painting and sculpture had the ability to capture the essence, beauty, and nature of light.   Wilfred came to the conclusion that it was impossible to depict or represent light though any medium that doesn't employ light itself.  "Because light moves", Wilfred said, "it becomes necessary to create art where movement is at its core and a necessarily dimension or factor where light is the subject for consideration."

Images from the Cleveland Public Auditorium performance on April 22, 1923, and the Cornish Theatre performance on March 5-6, 1924. (Yale University Manuscripts and Archives)

While large public performances of the Clavilux became a regular occurrence throughout the 1930s, Wilfred also became interested in building machines that were specifically for home use.

First home clavilux model built in 1930. (Yale University Manuscripts and Archives)

Built in 1928, the luminar was an automatic clavilux to be projected on a white ceiling in the home. (Yale University Manuscripts and Archives)

Wilfred talks extensively in this interview about the how his inspiration comes from nature, and how his performances and compositions are meant to tap into universal consciousness.  One can imagine how both his light shows and his rhetoric would appeal to later psychedelic art movements (in fact, the Whitney Museum featured Wilfred's Opus 162 in its 2007 exhibition The Summer of Love). And although Thomas Wilfred's legacy and his pioneering inventions has been somewhat preserved, he still remains a relatively unknown figure in the art world. There are only 35 extant Clavilux compositions known to exist today, and, since Wilfred had been reluctant to have his work recorded to film during his lifetime, many original pieces no longer exist. For more information about Thomas Wilfred's life and work see. http://wilfred-lumia.org/