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<\/a><\/p>\nArt is the honey of human experience It was 1968. The Jerry Abrams Headlights light show came to Salt Lake City with Buffalo Springfield. The crew needed a place to stay, and local junior high school art teacher, Kenvin Lyman, offered his place. \u201cI was amazed by those guys while they tested their equipment and used my walls and ceilings as projection screens,\u201d Lyman recalled during a visit I had with him several years ago. What the Abrams crew saw as playful \u201cpsychedelic effects,\u201d Lyman viewed as an alternative art form\u2014using primary light in a Newtonian manner as a mode of expression. \u201cI\u2019ve always had a high creative metabolism. Finding a dynamic media that could combine my interests in science and art literally electrified me. It was a paradigm shift,\u201d he said. That is when Lyman\u2019s life as an independent artist started to take shape.<\/p>\n In the Light Booth<\/strong> In my first light show, with my partners Mikel Covey and Harvey Warnke, we attempted to lift the light show out of the \u201cDark Ages\u201d by creating a central control system \u2026 We only partly succeeded because we hadn\u2019t yet developed a keyboard to control projectors or pushed the graphic system to a higher level. Both of those problems had to wait to be solved in my next light show experience\u2014Rainbow Jam. Flash and Edison made some important technical contributions to light shows and did some exciting shows, including the legendary band Steppenwolf at the Terrace Ballroom in Salt Lake City and Jethro Tull at the Fillmore West in San Francisco.*<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n According to Lyman, Rainbow Jam \u201creinvented the light show.\u201d It also reinvented him as an artist. His light show years included performances with The Grateful Dead, Santana, Ike and Tina Turner, Bo Diddley, and many others. Rainbow Jam also performed experimental light shows at Salt Lake\u2019s Hansen Planetarium in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n Without realizing it we had invented a silent musical instrument. Flash and Edison, the first light show I worked on, attempted to carry the light show to the \u201cnext\u201d level both aesthetically and technically at which it partially succeeded. Rainbow Jam, the second light show I worked on, built on that success and carried it much closer to that level.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part of computer graphics\u2019 important \u201cright-brain aesthetics,\u201d Lyman told me, \u201cevolved from these light shows, especially Rainbow Jam, and its discoveries and systematic applications of optical effects and backlighting.\u201d What Lyman called the \u201cleft-brain science\u201d of computer graphics, came out of the university environment, with substantive contributions from the University of Utah. \u201cWe hung out with the early software innovators at the university and at Evans & Sutherland. These associations helped inform the technical aspects of our work and eventually became part of the molecular structure of computer graphics.\u201d<\/p>\n Christopher W. Baker, a researcher who has written extensively about the history of computer graphics, said Lyman and Taylor created \u201ca look that had a powerful influence on the direction of computer graphics. This look inspired both the programmers writing computer graphics software and the artists using that software to imitate the look.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201clook\u201d was primarily based on innovative technological and artistic uses of a technique called \u201cbacklit art.\u201d Baker credits Lyman and Taylor for being \u201cthe first visionaries\u201d to \u201cexplore the process systematically even though some methods for producing backlit imagery had been previously tested\u201d by others. Baker described their light show work as \u201cvisual music in real time.\u201d Their visual techniques were eventually adopted by the print, broadcast, and film industries. Although not yet given credit in the published history of computer graphics, Lyman\u2019s and Taylor\u2019s new imagery provided a model for developing new visual effects in print and film, such as the glowing light-sabers in the first\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>.<\/p>\n According to Baker, their \u201cirridescent halo effects and rainbow diffraction patterns greatly altered the direction of advertising imagery and influenced the field of computer graphics to adopt its surreal lighting techniques.\u201d By the late \u201870s, \u201cwith this new imagery as a guide, the left- and right-brained tributaries started to converge.\u201d Their work also shows the impact art and artists have on technology and how the computer is both tool and medium.<\/p>\n The partners eventually went in different directions. Taylor moved to Los Angeles in 1971 to pursue graduate work and then to make TV ads and movies with Robert Abel and Associates, one of the most influential studios in the visual effects industry. Many of Rainbow Jam\u2019s innovations, especially those using primary light techniques, were quickly adopted by Abel and his team. Taylor\u2019s influence on the visual effects (and now gaming) industry out of California can\u2019t be underestimated.<\/p>\n Lyman stayed in Utah and formed Dazzleland Studios, where I first met him. He served a prestigious international clientele for the next ten years. His vast business portfolio included television commercials, feature films, and covers for albums, compact discs, magazines, and books. His concert posters, as well as those designed by Taylor, were popular in their day and\u00a0are now collectables<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rainbow Jam had a cult-like effect on visual media in the Seventies and Eighties. \u201cPainting with Light\u201d as we called it in Rainbow Jam, became \u201cPainting with Light on Ektachrome\u201d at Dazzleland Studios and Robert Abel and Associates in Hollywood. Dazzleland was my studio in Salt Lake City and produced work for Print Advertising and Experimental Art. It was the only studio that created images exclusively for the print industry using the \u201cbacklit\u201d techniques that sprang from Rainbow Jam.<\/em><\/p>\n Robert Abel and Associates, where Richard worked after the Rainbow Jam Days, produced mostly television graphics and commercials. Their influence on the new genre of Science Fiction films, starting with Star Wars, was profound. Their influence spread into the motion picture industry.<\/p>\n In both film and print these Rainbow Jam-influenced techniques became the models for the next generation of digitally-based production techniques. In the motion picture industry, \u201cOptical Effects\u201d became \u201cDigital Effects.\u201d In the world of print, \u201cOptical Compositing\u201d became \u201cImage Processing Software,\u201d such as Photoshop. The Disney cult classic, Tron, on which Richard was the Effects Director, is another example of the Rainbow Jam Effect. Richard put it very simply: \u201cTron was Rainbow Jam on film.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2026 During the Seventies and Eighties, Rainbow Jam\u2019s influence was everywhere: on television, in the movies, magazines, posters, on billboards, album covers and much more and it continues to this day and most likely will into the future. For a sixties light show, Rainbow Jam truly made its mark.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lyman continued to produce commercial and independent work until his death on February 6, 2011, the result of a fall at his home in Salt Lake City\u2019s Avenues. His obituary is\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and profiles\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The fate of the ICGA collection, comprised of works on paper and digital items that languished for years in a barn on the family\u2019s Spring Lake farm, but now safely archived in Salt Lake City, is a tale yet to be told.<\/p>\n In the Kitchen<\/strong> Lyman was an expert chef, an innovator and a champion re-inventor of Utah family heritage dishes. He insisted on fresh ingredients, such as\u2013<\/p>\n \u2026 crushed melons, table grapes, pears, peaches, field mint, root vegetables \u2026 raspberries, blackberries, fall radishes, winter squash, grain corn, wild mushrooms and late tomatoes.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He and his wife, Sofia Angkasa, grew organic vegetables, spices, and fruits in their backyard garden. Home winemaking was added to their passionate food-related endeavors in recent years. Just last November, Lyman analyzed the behavior of one of his favorite summer-season plants, the cucumber, which\u2013<\/p>\n loves to twine around corn. It\u2019s as if they have lived together in their evolutionary past and enjoy each other\u2019s company.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lyman has worked on a cookbook since 1998\u2014actually more of a personal history with over 200 manipulated photographic illustrations interwoven with family background and 120 kitchen-tested recipes, many from his Mormon pioneer heritage. This colorful celebration of food, life, and art was about ready for publication at his death. Regarding what he termed \u201cthe final phase\u201d of his \u201cfood book,\u201d he stated that\u2013<\/p>\n Perhaps I should say \u201cwe\u201d since I am being helped by book designers, editors, reps, printers, publicists etc.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n (In his November 19, 2010 Facebook posting, Lyman also updated the reader about the status of another significant project, the final phase of a music CD by his UK2 Band, a work made \u201cfrom scratch\u2014original with deep American roots.\u201d For more information,\u00a0go here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
\ngathered on the wings of sacrifice and hard work.
\n~ Kenvin Lyman<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nDeveloping this alternative art form prompted Lyman to cofound two touring light shows, the Flash and Edison with Mikel Covey, and later, Rainbow Jam with Richard Taylor.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>In the Archives<\/strong>
\nLyman organized and directed the International Computer Graphics Archive (ICGA), a nonprofit organization. He was also custodian of ICGA\u2019s treasury of materials, \u201cthe most comprehensive historical collection of computer graphic arts material in the world,\u201d he said at the time. While at the Art Institute, Lyman curated the industry\u2019s first computer graphics retrospective, \u201cAn Elegant Merging,\u201d which traveled to the Salt Lake Art Center. In 1996, Lyman, with colleagues April Greiman, Chris Baker, and Richard Childers, produced \u201cInfinite Illusions,\u201d a CD-ROM disk containing images from the collection.<\/p>\n
\nIn the late 1980s, Lyman moved to Missouri to direct the Computer Graphics Center at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he taught advanced animation, illustration, and experimental imaging. He also collaborated with performance artist John Cage\u2014on stage and in the kitchen as Cage\u2019s personal chef.<\/p>\n