Since 1962, the Prometheus team has developed the ideas of Alexander Scriabin and Wassily Kandinsky through what it calls “experimental aesthetics”: aesthetics tested through practice. Its method combines three stages:

• theoretical, aesthetic and psychological research;
• the design and construction of new instruments;
• artistic experiments using those instruments.

Over the following decades, the team tested many emerging art forms and combinations of media. It continued the work of Russian pioneers including Alexander Scriabin, Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné and Grigory Gidoni in light music; Leon Theremin in electronic music; Alexander Dymshits in spatial music; Vladimir Tatlin and Gustav Klutsis in kinetic art; Nikolai Voinov in abstract film; and Rudolf Zaripov in computer music.

Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau began with student experiments in light music, including a performance of Alexander Scriabin’s “Prometheus” with a lighting score. The group later expanded into many other forms of audiovisual synthesis. It described these exploratory projects as “reconnaissance in force”: a way to test new ground for the art of the future.

Alexander Scriabin imagined a universal art form that would unite music, light, speech, movement and architecture in his proposed “Mystery”. The Prometheus team began with his idea of a “symphony of light”, then extended its work far beyond light music. Practical constraints inevitably reshaped Scriabin’s ambitious vision.

Over the years, the team completed a wide range of pioneering projects:

the first large-scale light-music concerts in the USSR, presented between 1962 and 1970. These included Alexander Scriabin’s “Prometheus” and original visual interpretations of music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky, Igor Stravinsky, Farid Yarullin and Pierre Boulez;

early abstract light-music films, including “Prometheus” (music by Alexander Scriabin, 1965), “Eternal Movement” (Edgard Varèse, 1969), “Small Triptych” (Georgy Sviridov, 1975) and “Space Sonata” (electronic music, 1981);

“Sound and Light” (1970), the first open-air production of its kind in the USSR. It used spatial sound and no actors;

the first performances of spatial music and stereo radio theatre, in which sound moved freely through the auditorium (1974).

The team also introduced dynamic light and electronics into architecture and design. Its architectural projects included installation “Malinovy zvon” (meaning: mellow chimes in the raspberry light) at the Spasskaya Tower of the Kazan Kremlin (1967), weather-responsive lighting for the Kazan Circus (1968), and dynamic light installations at the Tatarstan Hotel, a planetarium and the KSTU museum. The bureau developed dozens of kinetic and interior systems, among them “Idel”, “Yalkyn”, “Electronic Artist”, “Kaleidophone-36” and “Disco”. Other projects explored functional sound and colour, engineering psychology and space psychology, including human-machine status indicators and controlled audiovisual environments for training and relaxation.

From 1979, Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau presented its experiments in the demonstration hall it had created at the Kazan Youth Centre. The hall welcomed between 4,000 and 5,000 visitors each year and hosted the annual All-Union Prometheus Readings. It was destroyed in 1991 and later recreated at the university. The group’s largest event was the All-Union Light and Music Festival, which brought together 500 participants from across the USSR.

For many years, the hall presented programmes including “Time, Forward!” by Georgy Sviridov, “Dark Flame” by Alexander Scriabin and Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro”, each with a lighting score. The Kazan Opera House also staged Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Snow Maiden” with light-music scenography. Spatial-music works and stereo radio plays developed for the festival remained in the repertoire, as did the long-running project “Children Draw Music”.

The studio presented slide-music works in which projected images dissolved into one another in time with the music. Its repertoire ranged from Georgy Sviridov, Claude Debussy, Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven to Pink Floyd and programmes based on Tatar ornament. Larger collaborations with musicians and actors combined music, poetry and projected images in programmes such as “Faust”, “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, “Colours of Ancient Rus’” and “The World as a Big Symphony”.

Video technology made abstract light-music films easier to produce. “Space Sonata” was reworked as a video combining projected imagery with a live performer. In 1989 the team created “Temple” and “Ballad for Bernt”, followed by “Dance of Vertical Lines”, “Dance of the White Vertical Line” and “Russian Terminator”. It later made “Frog Symphony” at the request of Dutch composer Henk de Groot.

The team continued its “reconnaissance in force” with the latest available technologies. The 1990 concert “Multimedia”, presented during Scriabin Days at the Kazan Conservatory, combined slide works, video, performance, a laserium, instrumental theatre and conceptual art. In its video installations, the television set became a character rather than a passive receiver. Later works combined video with computers, slides and lasers.

The 1991 open-air show “Magic Garden”, presented during Sabantuy, filled a public square with spatial recordings of birdsong, synchronised lighting and laser animation. Similar techniques were used for the 60th anniversary of KSTU, the 1992 World Congress of Tatars, UNESCO’s 1993 Young Cities conference and Kazan’s 1995 Victory Day celebrations. In 1992, the team also created an audiovisual presentation for the new Salikh Saidashev Museum.

In 1996, the team returned to Alexander Scriabin’s “Prometheus” at the Kazan Conservatory, using projected paintings by Wassily Kandinsky as the visual score. A more developed version entered the permanent repertoire of the city demonstration hall in 1999.

The same hall gave the first Russian performance of Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Hallelujah” with its lighting part in 1996.

Members of Prometheus have published around 30 books and more than 500 articles. Their research covers the history and theory of light music, Alexander Scriabin’s “symphony of light”, the work of Mikalojus Čiurlionis, Wassily Kandinsky, Leon Theremin and Grigory Gidoni, synaesthesia and the synthesis of the arts. The team also developed an original periodic system of the arts and investigated links between traditional melody and ornament.

Prometheus works closely with the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology and its journal Leonardo. Its contributions introduce Russian research and artistic practice to international readers and review new Russian-language publications for specialists abroad.

The Prometheus Research Institute organised fifteen Light and Music conferences in Kazan and Moscow and took part in festivals and symposia across Russia. From 1989 onwards, its work was also presented internationally, including at Ars Electronica in Linz, the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Groningen, Images of the Future in Montreal, the OSTRANENIE video forum in Dessau and conferences in France, Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The team also developed new lighting projects for public architecture. Completed works included installations in Kazan’s Victory Park and at the city’s new railway station. Other proposals remained as models or drawings, including a building conceived as a light instrument, writing in the air, a light-music fountain and sound-and-light performances devoted to Kazan.

The light-and-sound installation “Bright Heads of Bright People” serves as a collective self-portrait of the Prometheus Research Institute.