Charles Dockum

under construction June 2009

Charles Dockum (1904-1977)

Biography

Charles Dockum was born in Texas in 1904, and earned a degree in electrical engineering at Texas A & M in 1926. His health required him to move to Arizona, where he began working on the production of projection machinery that could perform color abstract imagery moving in a harmony and counterpoint comparable to auditory music. He coined the term Mobilcolor for this new artform, and gave public performances in 1936 in Prescott, Arizona. He became well enough to move to California shortly thereafter, and he continued working on improved MobilColor projectors (he would make six models altogether) at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. Dockum enjoyed successful performances at such places as the Pasadena Playhouse and the California Institute of Technology. In 1942, the Baroness Hilla Rebay awarded him a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation to build a new improved MobilColor projector that could be installed at the Guggenheim Museum. By 1950, Dockum had perfected the MobilColor IV, which could produce layered movements of diverse over-lapping imagery. Dockum built MobilColor V in the early 1960s, and continued to perform at various venues in California. The MobilColor VI remained unfinished at Dockum's death in 1977. (William Moritz)

"About the Inventor" from Dockum Research Laboratory brochure (coming soon)

About Mobilcolor

Dockum, Charles R. The Dockum Mobilcolor Projector:

The Dockum system of Mobilcolor Projection differs from previous efforts in this field in its practical means of generating mobile form elements, and in the sensitive and accurate control of these mobile forms of light toward the production of a logical and moving thematic development, analogous to the manner in which musical themes are composed into structural forms known as sonatas, fugues, symphonies, etc. Without such control no system can hope to meet the requirements of a great Art and hold a wide, sustained interest among composers, critics and the public. This system also provides a means of recording these visual compositions so that a permanent record remains of any composer's work, which can then be reproduced exactly as created. (reprinted in Dockum Research Lab brochure).

Program Notes. These were given to visitors attending Mobilcolor Concerts, providing brief descriptions of the compositions. (Courtesy Dockum Research Laboratory).

GEOMETRICS: Sharply defined shapes develop rhythmically with emphasis on theme and variation. New colors are formed by the additive process of color mixing, unique to the medium of light.

SPARKLETTS: Forms are made up of scintillating points of light. The use of varying light intensities causes the forms to come forth or recede in space, thus assuming a primary or secondary role in the composition.

YARDS AND YARDS: A three-dimensional quality is produced by a special treatment of the objective lenses.

IMPROVISATIONS: Manual and mechanical manipulations demonstrate the versatility and artistic possibilities of MOBILCOLOR, and how an artist would compose in colored light.

Press. De Groat, Charles. Charles Dockum's 'Light Show' Unlike Anything Offered Before. Star-News (Pasadena)

Film Documentation An excerpt from Dockum's 1952 Mobilcolor Performance at the Guggenheim film, preserved by Center for Visual Music from the 16mm camera original, was screened in the Visual Music exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles (February-May 2005) and The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. (June to September, 2005). This film also screened at The Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2005, accompanying their Hilla Rebay exhibition, at various other festivals internationally, and at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2009. This film and 2 others about Dockum's work are currently traveling in CVM's Essential Visual Music: Rare Classics film program.

CVM is currently preserving Dockum's films. Several have been completed as of June 2009, including a 1966 documentary by Dockum, and performance films from 1952, 1966, 1969 and 1970.

Selected Correspondence

Letter, Charles Dockum to Frank Lloyd Wright, June 10, 1944. Unpublished. Excerpt:

The Projector makes use of two groups of celluloid films, 4-1/4" wide, the three films of each group being superimposed before a projection aperture. By means of a seventh, control film, the films in each aperture group can be made to move either up or down, change speed or pause before the aperture. By this means designs carried on the films are made to modify each other as desired and produce rhythmic movements and effects over a wide range. The control film also governs the intensity of illumination. Special lens arrangements give the projections a luminous, prismatic quality.

The designs on the films are not drawn or painted on in the sense of painting a picture, as in animated cinematography. Rather the mathematical proportions are worked out which will give the desired results, and the films then opaqued to leave transparent "windows" which allow shafts or areas of light to pass through in guided movement.

Selected Performances

February 12, 1936. "An Evening of Modern Art." The Monday Club, Prescott, Arizona.

June 17, 1942. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, New York, NY (MoNO press release)

1952. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

Feb-March 1969 (7 performances). Arcadia Community Theatre - "Special 'Mobil-Color optical film effects created by Charles Dockum Research Labs."

Bibliography

Haller, Robert. "Charles Dockum" in First Light (New York: Anthology Film Archives). Ex. Cat.

Hanhardt, John, Karole Vail et al. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting. New York: Guggenheim Museum, forthcoming August 2009.

Levin, Golan. Painterly Interfaces for Audiovisual Performance. Thesis submitted to MIT, 2000.

Lukach, Joan M. "Hilla Rebay: In Search of the Spiritual in Art." (New York: George Braziller, 1983). contains errata

Keefer, Cindy. "Space Light Art" - Early Abstract Cinema and Multimedia, 1900-1959. in White Noise. Ernest Edmonds, Ed. Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2005. Ex. Cat.

Moritz, Dr. William

-- The Dream of Color Music, and Machines That Made it Possible in Animation World Magazine, 2.1, April 1997 (excerpt)

-- "Visual Music and Film-As-An-Art Before 1950" in On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950. Karlstrom, Paul J., Ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. (excerpt)

-- Abstract Film and Color Music in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. (Los Angeles: Abbeville Press, 1986). LACMA exhibition catalog. (excerpt online)

-- Towards an Aesthetics of Visual Music in ASIFA Canada Bulletin, Dec 1986.

--"Towards a Visual Music" in Cantrill's Filmnotes, 1985. Excerpt: "...the special intensities and subtleties of live light cause others, like Charles Dockum (1904-1977) to devote over 40 years to the perfection of his fine Mobilcolor Projector, a classic example of the plight of the color organ. The Mobilcolor, a large, complex mechanism, requires two people to operate it for an elaborate composition - but the resultant spectacle is definitely worth it. The imagery can be hard-edged or amorphous, and can be programmed to move at specific speeds in smooth, definite patterns. The wide range of controlled light intensity, with several (overlapping) sources, offers a visual delicacy that can not be reproduced on film or video."

Smith, Steven A., Greta J. Dockum, and Gretchen Evans Dockum. "Kinetic Art: The Mobilcolor Projectors of Charles R. Dockum (1904-1977). Leonardo 12 (1979), pp 144-50.

Zuvela, Danni. The Musicality of the Moving Image. RealTime Arts, No. 85 (June-July 2008). Brisbane, Australia.

For Bookings of Dockum's films contact CVMaccess (at) gmail.com

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