Light Show Transforms Staid EMU Ballroom

By Barb Fields

of the Emerald

"In a light show, the audience becomes part creator of what's happening. It's like an impressionistic painting ... it's only half there unless somebody's looking at it, reacting to it."

Jerry Abrams, of "Jerry Abrams Head Lights," stopped to talk a few minutes about the mechanics of a light show and his philosophy of this art medium.

Abrams was in Eugene with the "Grateful Dead," the "Quicksilver Messenger Service" and the "PH Phactor Jug Band." Along with four other crew members, he performed a light show in the EMU Ballroom last night.

Jerry Abrams Head Lights is a San Francisco based group. They do a show at the Avalon in San Francisco about once every three weeks and spend the rest of the time traveling with various bands.

How do you transform a staid, respectable ballroom into a viable entity conducive to a light show?

Abrams brings along his own screens on which to project the images. "According to Abrams, "white is the best surface on which to project light. Most walls are dull colored and uninteresting."

For the effects, Jerry Abrams Head Lights uses strobe lights, slide projectors, overhead or liquid lights and original films.

Abrams is primarily a film maker and almost all of the films he uses are his own creation.

Abrams is trying, by putting the lights and the music together, "to create a total environment which stimulates not only aural but visual responses."

"We almost create a third organ which is neither the ear nor the eye but a combination of both, " explained Abrams.

Abrams described the effect as a "strictly sensual thing," which eludes definition and is not susceptible to a thinking, analytical reaction. You feel it.