The present scientific understanding of the phenomenon of LIGHT includes an apparent conflict between two, up till now, mutually exclusive theories of the nature of LIGHT as a substance.

There are properties of LIGHT that are explained by one of these two mutually exclusive theories, but a complete understanding of the nature of LIGHT cannot be had by using only one of the two theories.

Although inklings of a way to understand a reconciliation of the observed paradoxical nature of LIGHT have been surfacing occasionally, the paradox, up till now has been caused by the following:

Sir Isaac Newton postulated that LIGHT is particulate... That is, LIGHT is composed of particles... bits and pieces of "stuff" that hit you in the eye.

The big particles are Red and the little particles are Purple and the other colors are made of particles that vary in size between the big Red particles and the little Purple particles..

Christian Huygen, on the other hand, postulated that LIGHT is composed of waves... That is, LIGHT is composed of "ripples" discernable by the eye, in a ubiquitous medium (the aether).

The long waves are Red and the short waves are Purple and the other colors are made of waves that varied in size between the long Red waves and the short Purple waves.

And for many years there was the insistence that either LIGHT is "particulate" OR "wavular", but it cannot be both.

And for many years there was the idea that one of the theories had to be in error. But...there are attributes of LIGHT that cannot be explained using only one of the theories.

There are now theories that attempt to reconcile this enigmatic anomaly, but the situation still remains tentatively obscure at best.

Consider the following two instances to illustrate the situation.

Waves cannot knock pieces (photons) off of a chunk of matter, but particles can. Therefore if one shines a Blue LIGHT onto a piece of Sodium, particles are ejected from the Sodium!

Imagine a block of Sodium. Imagine shooting it with a gun. Imagine that bullet is a particle of LIGHT, which, when it hits the Sodium block, knocks pieces of Sodium off the main block.

In the Newtonian theory, the pieces of Sodium that are dislodged are LIGHT and are detectable.

On the other hand, a particle cannot go through two holes at the same time but a wave can. Therefore if one shines a LIGHT on a surface that has two holes in it, an image of interference rings results caused by the same LIGHT going through both holes!

(The reason for this is a bit beyond the scope of this information, but it is so and should one want more information on how this occurs, it is covered in some length in almost any book on Optics.)

Suffice it to say: At the present time, with all the technology, we are still, if not in the dark (so to speak), at least in the penumbra of full understanding of the true nature of LIGHT.

And while it doesn't look as if an ultimate understanding of LIGHT will be decided in the foreseeable future, the understanding gets brighter and brighter as work progresses. This may account in part, for the fact that for certain people, LIGHT has, and will continue to have, a timeless and mystical allure.

The present ranks as the time when finally was devised ways of making LIGHT in relatively large amounts. From this ability to produce, project, and transmit images made of LIGHT, came the conception, implementation, and finally the performance of all kinds of LUMIC Arts.

From the simplest LIGHT producing devices, to the most complex of the frequency/amplitude driven LIGHT producing "organs", the basic thing that kept LIGHT from being equal to the SOUND was the concept of how to use it.

That this is the case, could have been as a result of the difference in the way SOUND and LIGHT are made.

SOUND was originally made "organically". That is: One could produce SOUND without any external equipment.

Thus, by the time SOUND came to be made using external equipment, the concept of manually manipulating the SOUND was already pretty well embedded in the psyche of man, which meant that he "used" the technology to produce what he conceived, but at no time did he ever believe that the resultant SOUNDS could possibly be made "automatically".

LIGHT, on the other hand, was NOT made organically. That is: One could NEVER produce LIGHT without external equipment.

Thus, by the time that LIGHT came to be made, it was done by equipment that was designed so that when turned on, did pretty much what it did, automatically. This resulted in the embedding of the concept in the psyche of man that: If it was LIGHT that was being used, it should have the ability to be set up, turned on, and what resulted would be "automatic".

Man had no way of using LIGHT until the technology to make it became available and by the time the technology came to be ubiquitous, so did the ways to modulate LIGHT.

Because there was no tradition of making and using "organic" LIGHT, the new ability to use LIGHT was of course automated and it came to be believed that although SOUND did not make beauty "automatically", LIGHT somehow did!

With the present understanding that we now have, making VUSIC is as manual as making MUSIC and we now are getting away from the idea that the visuals can be automated. Infact, it has become easier to automate the SOUND than it has to automate the LIGHT.

Eventually the use of LIGHT and SOUND together would came to be the order of the day. The problem was: That while the SOUND was produced manually, the LIGHT was produced automatically. The result of this was that while the SOUND was produced with much emotion and sensualness, the LIGHT was generally produced without being able to engender the equivalent emotion and sensuality.

The realization that the VUSIC can no more be automated than can the MUSIC brings us to the conclusion that: The Artistic manual manipulation of BOTH mediums is absolutely necessary.

The problem thus becomes: How does one manually manipulate LIGHT as one manually manipulates SOUND?

To answer this question, one has to go back to the idea of "Silence Being Black", and analogize the manual manipulation of SOUND, with the manual manipulation of LIGHT.