A Brief History of Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau
Chronology
A student research group was established at the Kazan Aviation Institute. It later became Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau. The group brought together engineering students and young engineers, as well as artists and conservatory teachers. Its first project was a light-music performance of Alexander Scriabin’s symphonic poem “Prometheus”, for which it built the stationary “Prometheus-1” light-music instrument.
Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau made the film “Prometheus” using an original process. The footage was shot on black-and-white negative film and later coloured using hydrotype printing.
The bureau completed “Crystal”, a portable light-music instrument designed for performances in ordinary venues. Its repertoire included Alexander Scriabin’s “Dark Flame”, Pierre Boulez’s “Structures”, Alexander Nemtin’s “Tears” and Claude Debussy’s “Fireworks”.
Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau designed a raspberry-coloured lighting scheme for the Spasskaya Tower of the Kazan Kremlin. In the 1967 installation “Malinovy zvon” (meaning: mellow chimes in the raspberry light), the brightness and lighting effects responded to the sound of the bells.
Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau created a dynamic lighting system for the Kazan Circus. Weather data was converted into signals that controlled changes in colour and brightness.
The bureau began developing the “Idel” series of automatic light-music installations for interiors.
The bureau began experimenting with practical applications of light music. These included human-machine status indicators, some designed for the space industry, and systems that produced functional light music for interiors.
The second All-Union research conference, “Light and Music”, was held and its proceedings were published.
The Tatarstan Hotel installed the permanent work “Light Stained Glass”. Lighting units were placed behind a corrugated translucent surface. In the same year, Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau created the “Northern Lights” installation for the Kazan Planetarium.
Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau created the first optical output unit for the “Mondrian” installation. Four “Proton” slide projectors were connected to the electronic unit of an automatic light-music system. Coloured filters placed in the slide frames produced projections reminiscent of Piet Mondrian’s paintings.
The bureau completed the “Spatial Music” installation. Performances that moved sound through physical space were presented at the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh) in Moscow.
The bureau developed “Yalkyn”, another light-music installation designed for interiors.
Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau hosted the third All-Union School for Young Scientists on Light and Music. It brought together specialists from across the USSR and advanced the theoretical study of art synthesis, light music and audiovisual technology.
Bulat Galeev, Irina Vanechkina and cinematographer Avis Privin made “Small Triptych”, the first light-music film released theatrically. It was set to music by Georgy Sviridov.
The bureau began working with architects on an 80-seat demonstration hall at the Kazan Youth Centre and developed its lighting and sound system.
The bureau completed “Electronic Artist”, an installation begun in 1976. It was an electronic television attachment that allowed an operator to draw light images on a television screen, alter their form, colour and brightness, invert them, change their scale and programme their movement. In effect, it was a pre-computer system for live visual performance; an early form of what is now known as VJing.
The bureau made its last film using the process of colouring black-and-white film. “Space Sonata” featured electronic music by Alexander Nemtin and Stanislav Kreichi.
The “Singing Space” system was installed in the museum of the Kazan Aviation Institute. It used the same lighting units as the “Northern Lights” installation at the Kazan Planetarium, together with “Leti-60M” projectors.
The bureau developed a series of “Kaleidophone” installations. The most successful, “Kaleidophone-36”, produced more than 36 different dynamic lighting effects from a single device.
For seven years, the Kazan Optical and Mechanical Plant manufactured “Disco” automatic light-music devices designed by the bureau’s engineers.
The sixth research seminar, “The Synthesis of the Arts in the Age of the Scientific and Technological Revolution”, was accompanied by the major “Light and Music” festival. The programme unfolded across nine locations in Kazan, including an exhibition of art projects on three floors of the Union of Artists Exhibition Hall, now the Gallery of Modern Art.
Using the “Dawn” installation, Bulat Galeev, Rustem Saifullin and Irina Vanechkina created the first slide-music films. Two slide projectors connected to a control console blended images on a single screen, producing fades, pulses and dissolves.
The bureau designed “Prometheus-3”, a new light-music instrument. Its control console had 12 channels, each connected to a six-channel unit.
Bulat Galeev developed a “periodic system of the arts”. The diagram brought together the bureau’s theoretical and experimental work and situated light music within modern culture. It was based on an evolutionary and dialectical view of cultural history.
The team directed and created the visual programme for six concerts titled “The World as a Big Symphony” at the Grand Concert Hall of the Kazan Conservatory. Musicians, visual artists, opera singers and actors combined poetry, music and projected images.
The seventh research conference examined “Functional Light Music in Industry, Medicine and Education”.
The eighth research conference focused on “Light Music on Film and Television Screens”.
Bulat Galeev began experimenting with video art and video installation. The installations included “Electronic Court”, “Living and Non-Living”, “Op Art about Video Art”, “A Lingering Air Kiss through the Glass of a Picture Tube”, “No One Is Safe from Prison or Poverty” and “The Dog Barks, the Caravan Moves On”. The team also created the videos “Temple” (kitsch style), “Temple” (in the style of Joan Miró), “Ballad for Bernt” (in the style of Wassily Kandinsky), “Harmony Viva” (in the style of Salvador Dalí) and “Dance of Vertical Lines”.
Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau organised the avant-garde concert “Multimedia” in the Grand Hall of the Kazan Conservatory and the open-air multimedia performance “Magic Garden”.
The tenth research conference, “Modern Laocoön: Aesthetic Problems of Synaesthesia”, was organised with Lomonosov Moscow State University.
The Salikh Saidashev Museum installed the “Audio Guide” system, which provided audiovisual accompaniment for guided tours.
The eleventh research conference examined “Light Music in Theatre and on Stage”.
The Prometheus Research Institute of Experimental Aesthetics was established jointly by the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Kazan Aviation Institute.
The twelfth research conference focused on “New Technologies in Culture and Art”.
With the support of musicians, Prometheus presented “Alexander Scriabin + Wassily Kandinsky” at the Kazan Conservatory. The team created and performed the visual score using powerful “PANI” analogue projectors.
The thirteenth research conference, “Electronics – Music – Light”, marked the centenary of Leon Theremin’s birth.
The fourteenth research conference, “Prometheus 2000: The Future of Light Music at the Turn of the Century”, was held.
Experiments in “musical graphics”, begun in the late 1960s, were reimagined in the “Singing Shamail” computer programme. Transformation software generated a “sound field” on the screen.
Works by Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau appeared in the major exhibition “History of Russian Video Art, Volume 1”, curated by Antonio Geusa at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
The fifteenth research conference explored “Synaesthesia: A Community of the Senses and a Synthesis of the Arts”.
The National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan opened “New Art at the Turn of the Millennium”, an exhibition devoted to Bulat Galeev’s research and artistic practice.
The sixteenth international research conference, “Galeev Readings”, marked the centenary of Alexander Scriabin’s “Prometheus” and the 70th anniversary of Bulat Galeev’s birth. The “Singing Rainbow” festival was held at the Kazan National Cultural Centre.
The ERA Foundation in Moscow presented “Bulat Galeev: The Art of Action”, curated by Anna Koleichuk and Vyacheslav Koleichuk.
The seventeenth international conference “Galeev Readings” marked the 140th anniversary of Alexander Scriabin’s birth and 50 years of Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau and the Prometheus Research Institute.
Dmitry Morozov helped reconstruct the 1966 “Crystal” light-music instrument for the Polytech Festival. The reconstructed instrument was used in two performances of “Synaesthetic Symphony” with Peter Kirn.
The eighteenth international conference “Galeev Readings: From Synaesthesia to the Synthesis of the Arts”, marked the 75th anniversary of Bulat Galeev’s birth. The event was organised with the Smena Centre for Contemporary Culture.
A model based on Grigory Gidoni’s 1920s design for “Monument to the Revolution” was reconstructed for the second time for an exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris. Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau had produced the first reconstruction in 1987 for the “Light and Music” festival. The 2017 version was recreated from a photograph by the Prometheus team and the Union of Artists of the Republic of Tatarstan.
With support from the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, the team reconstructed the “Electronic Artist” installation originally created in 1980.
The State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan presented the exhibition “Prometheus of the Space Age: Bulat Galeev at 80” and hosted the international conference “Galeev Readings 2020”.
“Prometheus of the Space Age: Bulat Galeev at 80” won the Innovation Prize in the Regional Project category.
The “Bulat Galeev–Prometheus” Foundation moved into new premises at the Smena Centre for Contemporary Culture and launched several joint projects. These included “Temples of Art: Seven Russian Projects, 1906-2022”, “Galeev Readings 2023” and “O-Network: Experimental Aesthetics and New Media in the USSR” at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg.
Projects included “Prometheus: Media Art through a Local Lens” at Egin Art Space in Almaty; “Ideas for a Bright Future” at the “Bulat Galeev–Prometheus” Foundation; “Oriental Style” at Smena; “Yalkyn” in the “Square and Space” exhibition at GES-2; “Techno-Optimists and Draughtsmen, or How the World Became Modern” at the Volna cultural centre in Vyksa; “Another Look at the Screen” at the “Bulat Galeev–Prometheus” Foundation; and “Related Technologies” at the Oktava creative cluster in Tula.
The programme included “Galeev Readings 2025”; “Op Art and Prometheus”; participation in IF Archive at the INTERVALS festival; “Hello, Lesha! Alexey Anikeenok, Bulat Galeev and the Kazan Thaw”; the residency “Revisiting Russian Media Art of the Last Century”; “Machine-Man” at the “Bulat Galeev–Prometheus” Foundation and the Smena Centre for Contemporary Culture; “Bright Thaw” at the Voznesensky Centre in Moscow; and “If I Kept a Diary”, marking the 85th anniversary of Bulat Galeev’s birth.
