The Art of Light: Genesis of “The Cosmic Tree of Life” A High Resolution Digital Painting by Roger Ferragallo
Introduction
Prelude To The Art of Light
1946-53, The G.I. Bill and School of the Art Institute Of Chicago
As WW 2 was ending in Iwo Jima 1945, I thought a lot about the extraordinary G.I. Bill opportunity to pursue my intense Interest in Art that occupied my early teen years. World War 2 broke out as I turned 18 years of age in December, 1941, with my fate thus established. Having survived four years in the Army, Air Force found me applying my art skills with the art of camouflage, stateside in California, Nevada and Utah. I was a Staff Sgt. assigned to Col. Lumsden, as his Aid. We traveled together to train Air Base soldiers throughout California, Nevada and Utah. It was a great assignment. He lectured and trained me to do the same. Later, overseas, in Iwo Jima, I was assigned to Air Force Combat Intelligence and prepared critical maps for fighter, P-51 pilots, whose mission it was to protect B-29 bombers over Japan. As the war came to a close, I addressed a letter from Iwo Jima to the Chicago Art Institute school, having convinced myself the integration of a great world class Art Museum and school, all in one package, was unique in the US. Within a month, I received a welcoming mail response in Iwo Jima and was highly excited.
Chicago Art Institute
My interest in an ‘art of light’ was rooted in my experience in Chicago, where I was a G.I. Bill art student at the famous Museum and School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1946-1953). The School was the accredited private university that became an integral part of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1863. When I arrived at the Art Institute in 1946, it was a thrilling experience to daily pass by the museum galleries filled with great world art on the way to student classrooms. I was also fortunate to work, part-time, at the museum throughout my 7 years at the Institute. It was inspiring to study Art within such a richly endowed world class school and art museum. The Museum had an outstanding large Library, run by a Librarian. I made great use of the Library throughout my studies and it was like a second home.
The startup semester curriculum (1946) was in tune with my wishes since I had chosen “Industrial Design” for my career major. I was drawn to the famous “Bauhaus” (Germany, 1919-1933) modernist design aesthetic that bore famous artist-teacher-educators like Laszio Moholy Nagy, Paul Klee, and Josef Albers. My instructors at the Art Institute were outstanding and I flourished in all my classes. Looking ahead, in 1947, I began to lift my Industrial Design ambitions to embrace the greater field of Art that lay before me. The school approved my request to change my major to Art Education because this gave me the option to choose any art course in the entire school curriculum. At the time, not surprising, given my Army Air Force two years of teaching “The Art of Camouflage” throughout California, Nevada and Utah to troops at Air Bases. This was done with Colonel Lumsdon. I became his Aid and learned the art, love and joy of teaching “The Art of Camouflage” from him. He was a great educator who left me a legacy that has followed my entire life.
The Art of Camouflage
Laszlo Maholy Nagy (1895-1946)
Approaching 1947, I was stunned to view the modernist, light-space sculptures, paintings, films and kinetic art that appeared in the Institute museum galleries to posthumously (decedent, 1946) celebrate the visionary Bauhaus, ‘artist-educator, Laszlo Moholy Nagy (1895-1946) whose work I deeply admired. Nagy left Nazi Germany and moved to Chicago in 1937 to organize the highly successful “Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology”, the first American school based on the Bauhaus program. He authored the well known book, “Vision In Motion” that impressed me profoundly from the moment I began my studies. It was timely to have this famous book in it’s new edition, in 1946.
Moholy Nagy’s painting, sculpture and film works —related particularly to the medium of light and kinetic forms stayed with me throughout the 4 year period I earned my Art Education, Bachelor Degree in 1950. His influence laid the ground for my growing interest in light as an art medium to include film making, design and teaching. As I entered the Masters program in (1950—1953), In 1951, I went on to acquire a 16mm Bolex film camera that I tagged a “light machine”. This drove me to produce art films in Chicago, notably, the film, “ 63rd Street Chicago ” (40 minutes, 1952). My 16mm films rest in the permanent collection of the Chicago History Museum, and also include “ The Bases Are Loaded ”, Thillens Park, Chicago (32 minutes, 1953).
63rd Street Chicago, Roger Ferragallo, 1953
Today there are more technological resources for light painting than at any other period of human history. We have light signs, light displays, color organs. But this is not yet the age of light painting.
There, Light as a new medium will infuse vitality into the ever-recurring problems of life to which the painter will address himself. It will bring forth a new form of visual art. And as we go forward from painting with brushes and pigments towards painting with instruments and light, there must be confidence that the achievement will not impair the directness nor lower the spiritual level of painting.”
Now everything is in the first stage of rediscovery. Past and present are overlapping. The painter must know his old craft but he has to become familiar with colorimetry too, with wavelengths, purity, brightness, excitation, and the manifold possibilities of artificial light sources. Then it will become obvious that the physiology of the eye is more closely related to the pure light of the spectrum than to the crude pigment mixtures of the palette.
“Vision In Motion,” Lazlo Moholy Nagy, 1945
In 1952, I was in the masters program, the film, “63rd Street Chicago” was premiered at The Art Institute Theater to the entire art student population by Kathrine Kuh, “Museum Curator of The Gallery Of Art (Curator of Painting and Sculpture). I had the pleasure to be one of a dozen graduate students chosen to be in a unique master class with Curator, Kuh. In her position she knew Moholy Nagy, having exhibited his work for many years in the Galleries. She spoke to our interest about his amazing light and motion works and his life. Nagy’s talented wife, Sibyl Nagy, was a famed Architectural Critic and writer. It was fascinating to have our questions answered and hear of his art and personal life. In the midst of master studies, Moholy Nagy’s aesthetics were compelling my studies toward kinetic art, film, painting and the medium of light itself.
The Art Of Light Pioneers: Color-Music Organs
Adrian Bernard Klein, Colour-Music, The Art Of Light (1892-1969)
While researching the medium of light aesthetics at the Institute Library, I was startled to find a remarkable book by author, Adrian Klein, titled “Colour-Music, The Art of Light” (1926) Adrian Klein’s book is the most comprehensive history of Art of Light color-organ pioneers ever published on this subject. (Klein, was an artist, author and he experimented with an art of light and colour—music organs).
Louis Bertrand Castel (1688-1757) England, “Clavessin Oculaire” (A Light Organ)
I discovered Jesuit, Louis Bertrand Castel, was the ‘first’ to imagine the existence of an independent art of colour-music. Castel was a Harpsichordist with a wide interest in mathematics, philosophy and aesthetics. His major contribution was largely prolific writing about the analogy concept of an art of colour and music harmony. He was known to have performed a music colour concert, “La Musique En Couleurs” in England in 1720 with his modified Harpsichord naming it “Clavessin Oculaire”.
A. Wallace Rimington 1854-1918, England, “Colour Organ”
Alexander Wallace Rimington was a professor of fine arts at Queen’s College, London and also an artist known for his colorful water-color paintings and also a skilled Etcher. His fascination for color/music harmony as a “new art “ (Castel) drove him to invent a large instrument that would fuse both arts. Rimington was likely familiar with a pamphlet on “ Colour-Music”, by D. D. Jameson (Smith, Elder & Co., Cornhill, 1844). Jameson had devised a systematic approach to create a colour-music score for an adapted piano. Later, in 1875, a writer on this concept had this to say: “Music and Morals” by Rev. H. R. Hawels, “Colour-art must first be constituted, its symbols and phraseology discovered, its instruments invented and its composers born. Up to that time, music will have no rival as an Art-medium of emotion.”
Rimington finished his instrument in 1893, naming it a “Colour-Organ”. “He gave a private concert at the old St. James Hall on the evening of June 6, 1895. His Colour Organ was an electromechanical system designed to project colors in harmony with music. His colors were viewed on all manner of ‘white cloth screens’, some gauze veils with different degrees of opacity and textured cloth . He stirred a lot of attention (including Richard Wagner) and went on to success in England. In 1911 he published his book, “Colour-Music: “The Art of Mobile Colour”. He gave colour-music concerts throughout England. In the early 1900’s and onwards, Color Organs from many other experimental artists could be found in Europe and the U.S.
American, Mary Hallock-Greenewalt, (1871—1950), Color Organ
Mary Hallock Greenewalt, an American pianist who studied with pianist Theodor Leschetizky, began in the early 1900s to investigate how gradation colored lighting might enhance the emotional expression of music. Greenewalt turned to colored lighting as the medium capable of giving expression to the combined mind and body countenance to music. These studies became the basis for her experiments with color lighting and the many patents developed in the creation of her color organ. By 1920, Greenewalt had obtained the first of many patents covering her color organ designed to project a sequence of colored light with piano music.
Greenewalt’s achievement, which brought enquiries from as far away as Japan and also brought her into competition with others interested in exploiting light color properties. In 1922 Thomas Wilfred performed with his color organ, he named a Clavilux, which projected colored light and forms in motion without musical accompaniment. Publicized as “Light as a fine art”, the Clavilux made its debut at the Neighborhood Playhouse, New York, on January 10th 1922.” That same year, Greenewalt cited Wilfred for patent infringement on her “System of Notation for Indicating Lighting Effects.” She soon abandoned this suit against Thomas Wilfred.
Thomas Wilfred (1889-1955) Painting with Light
The ultimate master of his time who “painted with light”, was
Thomas Wilfred. He was born (1889) in Denmark and was a musician, inventor and more. Wilfred was exposed to the arts at a very young age with his father in the business of photography. The precocious 16 year old studied painting, sculpture (sorbonne) and poetry in Paris and found early success as, “Wilfred the Lute Player” traveling Europe and America performing minstrel songs on the archaic lute.”
This comment by Wilfred is most telling:
My childhood was spent in my father’s home near Copenhagen. When I was a boy, prisms and lenses interested me. All the money I could lay my hands on was spent on buying various kinds of glass. The first thing of the sort I made was fashioned out of a cigar-box with an electric bulb and wires. Of course it was a primitive affair. Thomas Wilfred
Around 1905: Wilfred began to seriously experiment with bits of colored glass and electromechanical light sources. He moved to New York around 1908 and it was there he began constructing the first of his ever evolving clavalux instruments that made him famous and led him to establish a factory there. He went on to establish the art of light throughout the U.S., England and Europe and the first to utilize motion, form and color light on white screens at theatrical scales to “paint with light” without music. His aesthetic was a silent “art of light” producing enchanting fantastic abstract forms in motion that gave one the feeling of mysterious shifting shadows and ephemeral luminal color cascades of variable forms in motion. He seriously defined painting with pure light, naming it “lumia” and the first artist who fashioned his “instruments” with a keyboard of dials that controlled complex compositions as “symphonies of silence” Wilfred did not approve of the term, “color organ”, coining his instrument a “Clavilux”, from Latin meaning “light played by key”.
Thomas Wilfred has from the first confined his work to the solution of a particular problem, the development of an art of free light painting. His works are reminiscent of the last canvases of Turner, by some magic caused to fade and to glow, to recede and to advance. He controls the means at his disposal with extreme ingenuity, and doubtless before long he will gain such mastery over the management of his forms as to be able to paint with light whatsoever his imagination may direct. Adrian Bernard Klein, 1926
In 1952, Thomas Wilfred came to the Art Institute museum theater to give a surprising Lumia light demonstration to the entire school student body. Wilfred was largely unknown to all of us. He utilized a small hand controlled electro-mechanical device about the size of a small suitcase with a source of light, projecting luminal color forms, in motion on the theater white screen. I was stunned and felt an air of wonder as I watched his beautiful abstract color forms in motion, emerge, glide, fuse, merge, appear variously in the silence of deep space. He spoke to his concept of “lumia”as “painting with light”that thrilled me. I had only recently completed my film, “63rd Street Chicago.” I called it a “work of light” that echoed the Art of Moholy Nagy. We gave Wilfred a resounding ovation. Afterward, I took the opportunity to speak with him about my Bolex 16mm camera as a “light generator” and my film a work of light! Not only did he listen but singled me aside to privately meet with him the following morning at i0:am at the front stairs of the Art Institute. I was taken by surprise and roused. Why, I asked myself?
We met the next morning and I had no idea where we were going and why? It was a short walk to the Sherman Hotel. Arriving there, Wilfred used a key outside the hotel wall and walked me up a narrow private stairway upstairs to a room that housed a very large organ-like machine. Without a word he sat down at his (Clavilux) Organ (installed in 1921) and motioned me towards the windows that looked down on a very spacious huge first floor oval-like ballroom. I was amazed to see the ballroom wall totally encircled, end to end, by a (21 foot high by 210 foot wide) massive white screen. The “Clavilux” organ in the control room was one of the many large Wilfred, “Clavilux” light organ systems that he constructed, some permanently, in Europe and the U.S.
None of this was known to me and neither did I understand who Thomas Wilfred was and represented, until that day in Chicago at the Sherman Hotel. Wilfred immediately proceeded, without a word to move his Clavilux keyboard like an organist. Indeed, the young “G.I. Bill” student with his Bolex film camera was astonished to look down from the control room window. With Wilfred, now at his keyboard, the giant screen suddenly came alive! The entire wrap-around screen was instantly ablaze in stunning colorescent light with emerging mystic and majestic flowing abstract forms in a deep space—in total silence—all in motion! I was stunned, if not shaken. Moreover the great 21 × 210 foot screen also became the inside walls of a huge Greek like Temple that could enclose an audience of hundreds; this blew my mind! My experience with Thomas Wilfred defines who this great artist was and still is today with his works still being shown in museums in the US and Europe.
Wilfred died in 1955, but a large amount of his work lives on in the 21st century. He was the first painter to create a named, “Eighth Art” medium and the first to “paint with pure light, forms in motion as a silent art”.
Thomas Wilfred bid me well and handed me a rolled up diagram and said, “You can easily build this device and with it “paint with light”. The diagram appeared to be much like the unit he used the day before, to all of us at the Art Institute demonstration. The time came later for me to build this device in San Francisco (1960) with the production of “ Motion, Image and Form ”. I was, at the time, the scenic designer for the San Francisco Contemporary Dancers Foundation (1957-1963). I co-produced this event with choreographer Jay Marks in San Francisco. The Wilfred device was given the name “Bubble-Machine” by surrounding staff that I did not appreciate.
Motion, Image and Form (Light), Scenic Design for San Francisco Contemporary Dancers Foundation, 1960
1950-1955, Chicago Industrial Design Work
Along with my studies and part time work at the Museum, I had also been working part time with Industrial Design firms since 1950. “Wieboldt’s Inc.” particularly interested me since their design needs and business reached both Chicago and New York. The “Oscar Lee Industrial Design” and “H. Ferrals Industrial Companies” were equally great to work with. My interest in an art of light came into play with “Lampcraft Industries, Inc” who mass produced and nationally marketed table and floor lamps. They featured Ferragallo designs in the Chicago Market Daily with good results.
An unexpected offer from Hollywood?
As I neared my master graduation ceremony in 1953, Curator Kuh came to me with a matter concerning my film work. She offered a film opportunity to meet Hollywood film professionals, who would definitely employ me. I was surprised and conflicted. “Hollywood” had a ring that did not rest well. It was tempting but I was still working with Industrial Design Companies and doing some part-time teaching and had no desire to leave Chicago. My career ambitions were too wide, some of which had to do principally with Design, Art Education, and Teaching. My plan, after the Master Graduation, was to head home to my beloved San Francisco Bay Area to sound out career ambitions.
After my ‘master’ graduation in 1953, and having recently married, it was a good time to ease up on the Industrial work to enjoy the Chicago lakeshore parks, trails, museums and Adler Planetarium. During this period I was delighted to receive a timely call from my favored Vocational Lane Tech school, having done part-time teaching there in 1952.
1954—“Chicago Lane Technical College Preparation High School Selective Enrollment Magnet School: (Shades of the Moholy Nagy Bauhaus Aesthetic)
The famed Chicago, all Boy, Vocational ”Lane Tech” School is a remarkable institution with a consistent student population near 5000. The school continues largely Vocational with an Academic curriculum and is now open to girls (1971). “The school was founded in 1908 and dedicated on Washington’s Birthday as the ‘Albert Grannis Lane Manual Training High School’. Lane Tech has the most graduates who complete PhD in the nation as of 2018” ( wikipedia.org, LaneTech.org )
Lane Tech Building, Founded 1908
In 1954, I was offered an attractive, full time, one year Art Department teaching position to replace an Art instructor who would be away for the better part of a year. It was love at first sight, meeting 32 serious young art students. My instructional task involved (in-house publishing) creating a large complex school yearbook with a good deal of artwork, image illustrations, photography and text that involved the entire class. The art students were highly receptive and eager to begin the task. I felt a joyful sense of synchrony with them, as we began and completed the successful year long project. The experience would have a strong impact on my career, future and life.
(1955-56) On to California, Designer Work, San Francisco
On arrival in California and my hometown of Mill Valley, it was a joy to be home with my mother and also visit my brother and family in Oakland. I later settled in San Francisco where I readily found Industrial Design work with “The Paul Stanley Company” (1955-56) One of the more interesting projects for this organization was to design a large Industrial Display for a Las Vegas Convention. The display involved a built-in actual working carburetor. I later moved on to work with American President Lines (Matson Line).
(1957-63) San Francisco “The Contemporary Dancers School & Foundation”
Amidst the design work and occasional part time teaching, I moved to a larger apartment on busy Polk Street, located near Downtown San Francisco. It was uniquely located on the rooftop of a six floor apartment building with an elevator entrance to the rooftop. The apartment stood on the bare roof without obstructions and a great view. Polk street is adjacent to Washington Ave. Midway on the Ave., there stood a large beautiful Theater and side frontage that housed the Dance School classrooms.
Outside posters suggested other artistic activities were utilizing the theater besides Dance productions, film and other events. The word “film” aroused my interest and I soon met the owner, Choreographer, Mr. J. Marks! Our meeting went well and it was not long before I found myself the Modern Dance School’s Principal, Set Designer and Film Cinematographer for the following seven years. I also was on their Foundation Board of four.
Desire, Stage Set
Rite of Spring, Stage Set
Rashomon, Stage Set
Les Chants de Maldoror, Stage Set
(1957) Camera Obscura Theater Film Event: I attended a film series, Camera Obscura, screening experimental films at an evening event at the Contemporary Dance Center. After enjoying the experimental film works: three young film producers (Bruce Conner, Larry Jordan, and Ben Payne) faced the audience and said that this was to be the last of the Camera Obscura Series. They addressed all of us with the serious hope someone might be interested to continue the “Camera Obscura” series.
This was music to my ears and those of seven others, namely: Donald and Willy Werby, Val and Claire Golding, Larry Jordan, Ben Payne, and Marvin Usevich. I took hold and set the day and time to meet at my apartment with the result that the Camera Obscura Film Society went on to exist.
(1958) Willy Werby, “Camera Obscura Film Society” and “Children’s Cinema Guild”
It goes without saying, Willy Werby, to this day, is more than a great friend—we both share a deep interest in film. She was entirely responsible for adding the very popular “Children’s Cinema Guild” to our Camera Obscura Film Society, making this a great Saturday Matinee success. The films we presented to both adults and children were largely due to Willy Werby. She was responsible for the meticulous research and development that went into programming both Series programs. Camera Obscura would not have been fruitful without her superb organizational capabilities and film knowledge.
Donald Werby served as the Camera Obscura Publicity Director. Our friendship engendered broad business consequences and was a game changer in my life and career—far and beyond Camera Obscura.
(1958) Donald Werby, Real Estate Developer—Ten Sutter Corp—Pickwick Hotel, San Francisco
My Industrial Designer days took a back place when I met Donald and Willy Werby. We became the best of friends from the moment we met. Donald Werby was a strong Real Estate Magnate with energetic, empathetic social qualities that endeared me to him. He had a good look at my artistic portfolio and wasted no time generously inviting me to join him, as a close business friend, at The San Francisco Pickwick Hotel. I was stunned! I found myself in a private, very large space on the Pickwick Hotel mezzanine floor, overlooking Fifth street near the San Francisco Chronicle building and Market Street. His office was nearby.
My design work was dedicated to architecture. Werby directed clients to my office that I could service with visual concepts. Some of my projects demanded a licensed architect consultant for assisted engineering. I sought out and hired Architect Stanley P. Bower. I formally forged ahead as: “Roger Ferragallo & Associates, Architectural Consultants”.
The 40 Nations Market, Interior, 1958
The 40 Nations Market, Exterior, 1958
I kept busy for some two years with architectural projects. There was particular excitement over The 40 Nations Market I had designed and very near to being constructed with great press support. Then, Donald said we were out of The Pickwick Hotel and came to me with a project involving the historic St. Francis Hotel. I turned the offer down. My mind felt a strong wish to embrace my “Lane Tech” yearning life career ambition as an Art Educator. 1959 led to my settling in Oakland to raise a family coinciding with the start of my 32 year teaching and administrative career with the Peralta Community College District.
Laney College, 2020.
(1961-70) The Dawn of a Career Art Educator
Laney College was a total Vocational College with only one instructor teaching Humanities. In 1961, I became the second Liberal Arts Laney hire with a portfolio that lived in both worlds (Vocational and Liberal Arts). At the time, it was largely unknown whether the new 23 million dollar Laney campus was to be completed by 1970. Approaching that date, I was given a green light to create an Art Department. I forged ahead to hire 10 full-time instructors and 14 day and night part-time teachers with Administration approval. It was joyful to found and chair the first ever Laney Art Department. This would serve all the Fine Arts from Drawing to Painting and Sculpture and include the Vocational Arts comprising: Interior Design, Film & Animation, Industrial Design, Advertising Arts, Graphic Design and a complete Ceramics-pottery laboratory.
(1964-65) “Perceptual Learning Center”
In 1964, while teaching Art History and Art Appreciation, I began to develop a new kind of non-traditional teaching environment. I named it a “Perceptual Learning Center”. I sought to establish a unique space for multiple analogical triple image projection and control of sound and light to convey enhanced perceptual delivery of instruction. With the support of Laney Administration, a room was found which had great lighting, a rheostatic light environment and a 12 ft. screen. Eastman Kodak and donation of 3 projection systems led me to design a Lectern Model that controlled three projectors in a piano-like image array in any of 7 possible combinations was stunning. Students loved the analogical imagery and course content lectures that made the Learning Center popular and effective instructually. It must be said, anything that enhances analogical reasoning, comparative logic or synthesis of thought is the means by which mental functions may be most deeply impressed.
Ferragallo Console
Control Panel Detail
(1966–69) “Total Environment Learning Laboratory” (TELL)
Growing out of all the excitement stemming from my multiple image demonstrations, my ideas grew far more complex than simply projecting analogical image arrays. In 1967, I proposed my “virtual reality” concept, naming it a “Total Environment Learning Laboratory” (TELL). I developed a succession of designs and sketches that visualized experiential simulation in media rich teaching laboratories. These ran the gamut from personal modules to large-scale architectural environments designed to address team teaching of academic and vocational disciplines throughout the Laney College Campus.
TELL Project, Plan View, 1967
TELL Project, Renderings, 1968
TELL Project, Roger Ferragallo with Scale Model, 1968
As conceived, TELL was to have a geodesic dome environment with a hemispheric 360 degree planetarium-like projection membrane. This would include a ring of 14 screens for a variety of image projections of stereoscopic, cinematic, and television imagery. In addition it would feature traveling sound, climatic atmospheric effects, an olfactory delivery system, and complete control of light and color. Control of the environment along with a mobile hydraulic floor to accommodate a wide range of Laney faculty instructional experimentation was included.
In 1966, the TELL project received the enthusiastic support of new incoming Laney College President, Dr. Wallace T. Homitz. Dr. Homitz’ interest in the TELL Sensorium project was powerful and we became close working collaborators on funding proposals and utilization concepts. He immediately freed me from half of my teaching responsibilities to pursue the project. Homitz brought intellectual rigor to the TELL concept and was instrumental in drawing local and national attention to the project among College Educators throughout the country. (Glenco Press, Islands of Innovation Expanded. H. Lamarr Johnson, 1968)
Barely three years under development, TELL came into difficulty due to the widespread social unrest of the sixties that was particularly intense among community college and university campuses in the Bay Area and across the country. The most severe blow to the TELL project came when Laney President Dr. Homitz had to resign his presidency due to a serious medical crisis in 1969. Without his support, the TELL project was not sustained.
(1961-94) The New Peralta Community Colleges District, Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda
(Channel 38 PCTV Cable Broadcasting System)
I transferred from the Art Department to the Television Department since the new Laney college added a theater building that included a complete equipped television broadcasting system plus control room and adjacent studio.
1964: Founder & General Manager, 1964-1988, PCTV (Peralta Colleges 24 hour Cable Broadcast System, serving all East, San Francisco Bay cities. introduced a unique instructional concept embracing a student run professional broadcast system, 24\7 with paid students (given 2 year contracts with new rehires every 2 years, since Community Colleges are 2 year systems). Hired qualified students had the unique opportunity to actually learn a 2 year particular broadcasting craft, be it a camera operator, control room engineer, channel manager and other special television broadcast positions. This led to finding jobs in the television work world. We had a high rate of hires throughout the many years PCTV was on the air, demonstrating the success of our 9 year Peralta Colleges run broadcast Cable System.
The Peralta Colleges could now reach out to thousands of east bay populations via our student run cable 38 channel. It was the result of my procuring 2 ITFS channels, free and clear with the help of Oakland Schools and UC Berkeley. As a result, I was invited to the White House, Commerce Department, and was also invited to meet Governor Brown in Sacramento (the result of the only unique student run cable station in the country). I became the Peralta: Director of Telecommunications; Founder and General Manager, PCTV network (1965-1992). Beyond my retirement in 1992, Channel 38 no longer became an educational student run Cable channel. PCT is now operating with permanent hired staff.
1971: Sabbatical Year: Iran, Middle East, and Europe
1982: Founder and of TELETRENDS Publisher, Quarterly “League For Innovation—Community College and the Computer Project” (National): To all Community Colleges) Vol. 4 No. 3 Spring 1982 Ferragallo Retires Peralta Colleges: 1988
A TRIBUTE…In a quiet unobtrusive manner, Roger Ferragallo has spent a full, professional life planting innovations along the way. The Peralta Community College District is a richer, better place for his having worked there, and so is the League for Innovation in the Community College. In 1983, Roger created TELETRENDS, a newsletter on communications technology of interest to faculty and staff in community colleges. He served as its editor until his retirement in 1988. Under his leadership, Teletrends became a highly regarded publication serving community colleges throughout the United States and Canada. Perhaps the highest form of tribute that can be paid to Roger for his pioneering work is that his work will be continued with this issue, Teletrends, the newsletter of the Leagues Community College the Computer “project, will be published by Cuyahoga Community College. This first issue is dedicated to Roger Ferragallo for his leadership as an outstanding innovator whose dedication and creativity will live on in the pages of Teletrends. Terry O’Banion, Executive Director, League for Innovation in the Community College. Vol 4, No. 3, Spring 1989
Cosmological Origins
The Sciences, Cosmology, and Philosophy
Concurrent with my art of light interest, my ongoing art academic studies at the Art Institute were steadily shaping my deep interest in The Sciences, Cosmology and Philosophy. Foundational books that would set me forever on my Cosmic Journey, namely: Theodore A. Cook’s “The Curves of Life” (1914), an account of spiral formations and their application to growth in nature, science, art, and life with special reference to Leonardo Da Vinci; The second seminal two volume book was D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s, “On Growth And Form” (1942), the foundations on which art is built and the physical laws that cover the types of shape which living things assume, both plant and creature.
My reading and early cosmic bio-cosmic drawings and paintings came as an imaging flood during the 1950-60 period. What made it so, was to suddenly sense the extraordinary mystery and conscious beauty of the colossus universe we are all born into. I began to explore and quest the mystery of it all.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in all, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed”. Albert Einstein
Unbound Aeriality, Pen and Ink Study, 14″ × 18″, 1953–54.
Nemesis, Pencil on Tissue (reversed), 12″ × 8″, 1957.
Birth in Space Painting, 1962
Birth in Space, Oil Crayon on Wood Panel, 20″ × 30″, 1961–62.
Birth in Space, created in 1962, was my earliest comprehensive cosmic painting, created when I was celebrating the birth of my first daughter, Lygeia Ferragallo. I gathered oil crayons, rendering them on a wood panel to unleash thematic ideas that had been percolating in me during the 1950s about a bio-cosmic universe. Birth in Space captures the surreal conception of interstellar cosmic forms and appearances that unwind with life and fetus in a universe friendly to conscious existence. At the time, I was caught up with the fine-tuned fundamental constants of the universe that underlie the golden ratio and fractal recursive patterns in nature at all scales—from helical life forms to spiral galaxies. This would deepen my philosophic cosmic outlook of a new subject matter driven by anthropic ideas that set forth a carbon-based universe so finely tuned for life that conscious beings on our planet may well have been inevitable. These philosophical ideas only grew stronger during the 1960s and 70s, fed by new technology, science, astronomy, visuals and data that began appearing from all science quarters: quantum to quasar to a cosmic art of light.
The Anthropic Principle
In the 1950s, I had also been influenced by astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) who invoked the “Anthropic Principle” (a concept named later in 1972). Anthropic ideas come in several humanistic flavors that give reason life had to emerge because beings like us are here as conscious observers. Hoyle also believed that the cosmic pervasiveness of carbon-based life-forms on our planet may well have been seeded by comets and asteroids. Astrobiology today vindicates Hoyle because we observe a host of elemental compounds permeating interstellar space that are products of stars and supernovae. It has been proven comets and asteroids are known to carry organic molecules and other organic materials, together with water.
Hoyle’s greatest scientific achievement was discovering the process of nucleosynthesis, proving that thermonuclear fusion reactions in stellar interiors or in supernova explosions bring about all the chemical elements of the periodic table. He gave remarkable credence to supernova explosions that would scatter these chemical elements and star dust into the interstellar deep where they would seed still forming star systems.
Hoyle vigorously fostered a steady state universe rather than one born from a single explosion 14 billion years ago. He went on to strongly put down advocates of an instant creation by derisively coining their explosion theory a “Big Bang.” He courageously fought hard against the Big Bang theory for the remainder of his life.
Life cannot have had a random beginning…The trouble there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 40,000 power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. Fred Hoyle
The Advent of Computers and the World Wide Web, 1980–98
Roger Ferragallo, 1998
I Paint With Light In the 1980’s
It was a timely period where powerful desktop computers came as a flood to the marketplace with fast evolving paint software providing 16 million colors and a variety of digital tools to facilitate the creation of image and form.
Painting with light was a concept born in my student days in Chicago. It was my good fortune to meet the renowned international ‘Art of Light’ pioneer, Thomas Wilfred, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952 (described in detail on my website). Wilfred, in 1920, coined the term “lumia” to describe “an eighth art” where light would stand on its own as an expressive art form and be a silent art.
Computers began appearing in the late 1980s that could print museum quality fine art to large canvas and paper substrates. By the mid 1990s, cathode ray monitors grew from 17 to 21 inches.
It was a time like no other, with the world wide web, beginning about 1991, roaring ahead to become the new global reality. Surely it was an electrifying time to be a painter whose cosmic dream, for more than a half century, was to create a body of cosmic works with photonic light. The computer revolution was a breathtaking time and it all happened with sudden exponential rapidity. In 1992, I retired from a long career as an educator, freeing me to embrace my dream to paint with luminal brush in hand in the medium of light! My attempt to do this in the 1950’s was to create art films with a 16mm Bolex film camera
The learning curve with a pre-Windows MS-DOS operating system was difficult, but my light paintings soon soared with the times. At the start of the world wide web, I sought expert technical MS-DOS help from my niece in Germany, Caitlyn Meeks Ferragallo, now a VR specialist and technologist. Caitlyn facilitated my initial connection to the web which opened global contact and research possibilities invaluable to my cosmic work. It was an unimaginable technological era that made it possible to paint with emissive cathode light my cosmic luminal works throughout the period 1980-1998 and beyond. At the time, I had this to say:
Having all but abandoned traditional pigment, dye and ink, I find myself dazzled by a computer digital medium that allows me to paint with electrons streaming in rainbows of infinite light in a space as alive as the atmosphere itself. The affordable computer with its growing body of software tools is unprecedented, because together, they form a light speed synaptic medium which allows one to create, modify, change, store, capture, scan, and infinitely model in real-time whatever the mind can conjure. I can think of no medium, past or present, that coalesces so many powerful artistic tools within arms’ reach. Roger Ferragallo, 1998
MS-DOS OS, 1985
Windows OS, 1992–1999
Windows OS, 1998–2000
The tools I currently employ to create my light paintings are a 486/Pentium PC linked to a Video Camera, Printer, Modem, Syquest 88 Drive, HP Flat Bed Scanner, CD/ROM Drive, 21″ Mitsubishi Monitor, 2 Gig Hard Drive and 64 Megs of Ram. My system also utilizes a Targa+64 Graphics Video Capture Board, SVGA Diamond Stealth 64 Board and WACOM 12×12 tablet with pressure sensitive cordless stylus. I principally work with three software programs: Ron Scott’s Hi Res QFX for painting, AT&T’s Rio for two dimensional graphic design and Crystal Topaz for three dimensional construction. Roger Ferragallo, 1995
cross-sight free-vision (unlimited size/scale of stereo pair object separation)
straight-stare parallel-vision paired objects cannot exceed the 2¼ inch separation distance that exists between human eyes)
