Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau developed the “Idel” series of automatic light-music installations between 1968 and 1971. Several Kazan enterprises manufactured the prototypes. Bulat Galeev led the project; the designers included R. Galyavin, V. Boldin, Rustem Saifullin, V. Bukatin, Yu. Khakimov and I. Galiullin. The installations were intended for interiors.
Electrical signals derived from the music controlled the available lighting effects. Changes in volume, frequency and register affected the brightness, colour, scale, lightness and movement of ornamental forms. These forms were cut into stencils, which served as a kind of optical memory for the output device.
“Idel-1” and “Idel-2” used thirty-two compact 28 V lamps in a cassette behind two rotating disc stencils. The lamps were arranged in groups of four and could be switched in different combinations, expanding the range of moving light patterns. Lenses covered some of the stencil openings. When the music stopped, a background channel filled the screen with an even light that changed colour slowly.
The control unit contained automatic gain control, active band-pass filters and detectors with adjustable decay time.
Rated power consumption: 1.0 kW.
The “Idel” series introduced what the team called an “imitation of creativity”. During pauses in the music, a pause selector automatically changed the visual programme. Depending on the version, its signal went either to a stepping switch or to an electronic switch at the input of the optical output unit.
“Idel-1” used a television cabinet and measured 694 × 550 × 450 mm; it weighed 28 kg. “Idel-2” combined the optical unit and a tape recorder in a single housing measuring 1,000 × 500 × 450 mm; it weighed 46 kg.
“Idel-1” appeared at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, at a Soviet exhibition in East Germany and on Kazan and national television. “Idel-2” was presented to the Soviet cosmonaut corps in 1971, during events marking the tenth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight. It remained on display at the Star City cultural centre for many years. A letter signed by cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy praised its artistic and practical qualities.
A more powerful version called “Fairy Tale” used 220 V, 100 W lamps, four pairs of disc stencils and a 1 × 1.6 metre screen. It appeared several times at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy and was donated to Kazan special boarding school no. 4 in 1985. Silhouettes of landscapes and cities painted inside the screen turned the work into a light composition, with scenes such as “Dawn over the Moscow River” and “Forest Tale”.
The “Idel” installations were experimental and were not designed for mass production.
Further reading: R. A. Galyavin, R. F. Saifullin and I. K. Galiullin, “Automatic Light-Music Installations of the ‘Idel’ Series”, in The Art of Luminous Sounds (Kazan, 1973), pp. 194–208.
