The Electric Collage wasn’t just a light show—it was a full-scale visual production lab long before digital projectors and LED walls made it easy. Think of it as the original “mixed-media VJ set,” built by hand, driven by instinct, and synced to the pulse of live music with zero automation. Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, these shows didn’t follow the band. They danced with the band.

Electric Collage produced every performance like a living organism. Oils, dyes, glass plates, film loops, strobes, mirrored beams—everything was mixed live. There was no “Play” button. No templates. No presets. Every night the team crafted an entirely new universe of visuals that reacted to what the musicians were doing on stage. If the guitar screamed, the colors cracked open. If the bass dropped, the whole canvas shifted. If the crowd surged, the light moved with them.

And unlike many light shows of the era, Electric Collage wasn’t on side stages or free-festival tents. They produced the main-stage visuals for the big nights—the moments people still talk about. Atlanta Pop Festival I (1969). Atlanta Pop Festival II (1970). Dallas International Pop Festival (1969). When night fell and the headliners plugged in, Electric Collage took over the sky. Thousands of fans watched those living images melt, swirl, and collide over bands that would become legends.

Production was part science, part performance art. Two or three operators worked like musicians themselves—overlaying imagery, swapping lenses, mixing liquids, even heating or cooling slides to warp them in real time. Every effect was physical. Every color had a texture. Every layer had weight. The show you saw existed only in that moment and could never be repeated.

Today’s digital producers talk about “immersive media.” Electric Collage was doing it before the word existed—creating massive, mind-bending visual environments powered entirely by creativity, chemistry, and the raw energy of live music. It wasn’t just light projected on a screen. It was something you felt.

And now, generations later, that spirit of producing visual music still defines Electric Collage. Real. Live. Hand-crafted. Human. Exactly the way it was meant to be.