Moonglum (London)

Also see Electric Orgasm

Hi there,

Just seen our old name of Moonglum Lighting appear in your listings. If you want to increase our entry:

Moonglum Lighting was formed by three Architectural students at Brixton School of Building in 1968 and experimented with liquid lightshows.

Starting with a single Aldis projector uprated with a 750W lamp and an old hairdryer for cooling we performed at Beckenham Arts Lab – an experimental music and arts gathering at the Three Tuns pub.

Expanding with a second liquid projector, sound to light electronics and some stage lighting we lit student concerts at our college and others in the South East regularly working at Brunel University and Kings College Hospital.

It is too far back to remember much of the inks etc – and I was the electronics and electrics man!

The ink slides were ’standard’ mix of inks an oils sandwiched between two glass 35mm slides – very messy!

The other lighting was standard stage lights with a hand built controller incorporating a dimmer and multiway switching and press buttons.

A home built sound-to-light machine was incorporated from circuitry published in Home Electronics as was a strobe.

Through our work at Beckenham Arts Club, David Bowie asked us to light his concert at the Purcell Room of the Southbank Centre in November 1969 where we incorporated our moon logo into the show to accompany David’s performance of Space Oddity.

We decided to continue our studies rather than as requested accompany David on his tour of Germany – the rest is history on that front.

We continued lighting various events and concerts including an involvement with the Middle Temple [one of the Inns of Court] where we lit Fountain Court for their Summer Ball and various productions for the Bar Theatrical Society.

When we all finally graduated in 1975, architecture is a long course, we were all moving away from London and Moonglum Lighting was wound up.

* Moonglum is a character in the novels of Michael Moorcock’s Elric Chronicles set in a ‘Multiverse’ – yes Moorcock got there first!

T.G - September 2023