by Samira Selod

For the past year Mr. Chuck Q. Large has mesmerized audiences with his hypnotic light shows. Despite only sleeping three nights a week due to his busy schedule as UT computer science major Charles Clark; he still manages to use his scientific mind to concoct new and bizarre ways to manipulate audio and visual effects for your entertainment. Vivid colors circulating in and out of geometric patterns overlapped with clips from old sixties and seventies science films enhance the ambience of electronica, which guides you throughout Mr. Large's visual maze. Walking into one of Mr. Large's shows is a mind blowing experience so be prepared. Shades of red, green, and blue flow in the form of water relaxing you to a tee until the film clips, slides and transparencies all come in at once making the eye lose control of its focus and get lost in Mr. Large's channels of light.

The music is an important factor in Mr. Large's lighting. The music he plays for are almost always electronica although he appears to be open to new music as well. Electronica works well with his lighting because it develops a trance effect which is important when observing the slow, uniform, and repetitive patterns. Mr. Large began his adventures into projections last April, performing with local electronica acts Kitty and OMD 20/20. He has continued to add visual effects to OMD's performances throughout the year. He has also added lighting ambience to the sounds of Inkblot, quaquaversal, and DXM (not to be confused with DMX). In the past he has played at venues such as the Electric Lounge, The Spider House, The Purgatory Lounge, and the Red Room.

In conversing with Mr. Large, it was difficult for him to simply state what goes on behind his console, so he showed me instead. Mr. Large's set-up includes two overhead projectors, three film projectors and a slide projector. One overhead has a rotator on it and the other has a bubbler all which were hand made by Mr. Large himself. The rotator lies above various transparencies, usually consisting of some sort of pattern that creates an optical illusion when spun. He often uses the moire effect by overlaying transparencies and rotating their image in order to create the illusion of a new pattern of motion. Mr. Large finds his patterns wherever he can, be it in books, magazines or over the internet. He often uses color transparencies over the black and white patterns to make the images more vivid. The other overhead projects the bubbler which is made with a fish pump and colored water causing the band to look like they are floating in a tank.

On the slide projector, Mr. Large often uses negatives of certain pictures, usually of people since it gives the skin a strange green effect. He also uses diagrams of circuit schematics on the slide projector.

The film projectors consist of two sixteen millimeters and a Super 8 projector. The sixteen millimeters play old science films. Mr. Large's personal favorites are Plasma: The Fourth State of Matter, Dr. Seuss: The Lorax, and The Eagle Has Landed: The Apollo Eleven Mission. The Super 8 displays images of fractal loops which basically create uniform patterns by overlapping chaotic equations. These fractal loops are incredibly colorful and psychedelic.

As for the future, Mr. Large is looking more towards digital technology than the analog. He would like to use video projections allowing him to feed existing projections back onto each other creating video feedback. Video mixers intrigue him as well since they would enable him to sequence visuals so that he could create a basic pattern adding layers on top of it live. Eventually, Mr. Large would like these visual sequences to match up with the bands audio sequences so that the patterns would move rhythmically with the music. This would give Mr. Large ultimate satisfaction since for him, "the idea is to have all these multiple things going on at once." It is obvious Mr. Large finds thrill in the sensory overload.

Aside from the light shows, however, Mr. Large has begun to venture into the audio realm as well. His emphasis is circuit bending , a technique often associated with Sonic Boom from Experimental Audio Research. Circuit bending takes a circuit and rewires it to manipulate the original audio source, changing the frequency, tone and wave form of the sound. Mr. Large often uses children's toys and old keyboards as an audio source since they are cheap and easily accessible.

When visiting Mr. Large it seemed utterly impossible to free him of his toy circuits, which he had hooked up to surround sound, causing the room to vibrate the alphabet in a slow droning voice in various frequencies. Apparently he had been at it for twelve hours straight.