Documentation on Licht-Raum-Modulator (Lichtrequisit einer elektrischen Bühne), 1922-1930, Rekonstruktion 1970

In the early avant-garde era manifestos and utopias by artists led to concrete technical experiments. They had to become inventors and handymen to make their utopias visible and audible. In the mid 1920s, concepts emerged in and around the Bauhaus for cooperation between artists and technicians with support from industry. (Light-Space-Modulator) was driven by electric motors, but its engineering perfection served only aesthetic purposes. However the ambition was to transfer such large scale light projections to a ‘simultaneous polycinema’, which would anticipate the immersion offered by virtual reality art forms. The Light-Space-Modulator can be used to arrive at countless optical effects, as a way to approach the designing of light and movement.
Courtesy: Bauhaus Archiv Berlin (www.bauhaus.de/bauhausarchiv).

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1947) was master at the Bauhaus from 1923 to 1928, first in Dessau and later in Weimar. He was forced to emigrate in 1934, going first to Amsterdam and then to London. In 1937 he founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago. It was succeeded by the School of Design in 1939 (renamed the ‘Institute of Design’ in 1944).