Liquid light shows were performed chemistry: colored oils and water pressed between clock glasses on overhead projectors, pulsing and blooming as operators tilted and squeezed, layered with film loops and slides across the band. San Francisco ballrooms and venues like the Fillmore made the form famous; crews like Joshua Light Show made it art.
The shows were genuinely live and reactive, hands responding to the music in real time, which makes them VJing’s direct ancestor with analog materials.
The aesthetic never left: lava-lamp physics, blooming color fields, organic motion. Fluid simulation scenes, including Photism’s, are the digital descendants of those clock glasses.