Both the Whitneys and Belson found Eastern metaphysics, which was able to develop the spiritual side to people’s consciousness, essential to their conceptual development of cosmic cinema art (148). In comparison to the stillness, relevance to real objects in painting, their work broke down these conventional restrictions and eliminated representational imagery and any association with the real world. Colors, amorphous forms, and constant motion replaced plain lines, hence, their work became non-objective. Their use of music as accompaniment examined the transformative power of abstraction in motion and its correlation to music, which built up synthetic sound/image relationships. Their visual-music films, developed from their religious belief system — Eastern metaphysics, sought for spirituality. They created a super-sensory environment for spectators and were mind-expanding.
Differences cannot be neglected though works from the Whitneys and Belson shared a lot in common. John and James Whitney managed to weave art, science, and spirituality together into a coherent visual-music form. They generated sound from the motion of a pendulum, shaped and formed mandalic imagery with the innovative “atomic” language with an attempt to approximate mind forms. They used mandala form to reveal some truth about the structure of the universe, for James in particular, “these truths lay not in the natural world but in the mind” (132). The Whitneys’ films tried to create an ideal world of linked senses in which sound, shape, color, motion are absorbed into one another. The Whitneys’ work was of great inspiration of Belson’s cosmic cinema creation. Unlike the Whitneys who used contemporary technology to push visual music into new cosmic dimensions, Belson practiced both old and new technology, including standard animation, optical printing, lasers, and liquid crystals (148). Belson created electronic sounds by himself, and the music-to-image relationship in his films became extremely tight. Belson’s films involved meditational practices that shorten the distance between art and people, made art possible to operate directly on the body and mind.
Belson’s cooperation with electronic composer Henry Jacobs made great contribution to Vortex Concerts. Film contents became free of the frame, and visual music was able to move from the screen to a three-dimensional space. The environmental aspect of the concerts broke down the rectangle of the film frame and offered the audience a “sinking-in feeling” that extended the two-dimensional space of the canvas into deep space. Artists’ interest in sacred geometry and cosmic archetypes was implied in light shows, which broke the line between the so-called “high art” and “low art.” High art and popular culture, abstraction and representation, the scientific and spiritual, the electronic and natural, the visual and aural all collaged together in overlapping sensations in light shows. Not only the content but also the way light shows were displayed became more approachable to the larger audience, flowing into mass culture.