We recently connected with Tim Ramirez and have shared our conversation below.

Tim, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Learning about liquid light shows was a very interesting process since there isn’t a ton of info about them out there. It’s a lot of experimenting mostly but my ex light show partner and I found Steve Pavlovsky of Liquid Light Lab’s YouTube videos and it was a huge help in understanding the basics of psychedelic light shows and gave us a really good starting point. We also found a really helpful Facebook group of people who do these specific analog light shows and it’s such a great hub of wonderful people who all help each other out with any questions we may have. I felt that even though there wasn’t a ton of info out there, that these resources we have access to really helped launch us into a successful start.

Tim, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve been living in Chicago for 9 years now and for the first 6 years I was living here I was working for a production company running shows at a couple local venues. I became friends with lots of very creative and interesting people. After pandemic I decided not to come back to work in venues and ended up discovering psychedelic light shows. Working in the music scene for so long really helped me get my name out there and offer services like doing visuals for live bands, music videos, photo shoots, and private parties. I’m trying to push the envelope on what can be done with just some old vintage overhead projectors, slide projectors and hand made items. I’ve been lucky enough to do live visuals for Budos Band all the way to doing a photo shoot with Chance the Rapper for Paper Magazine. I’m looking forward to what I can figure out next with this constant experiment.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

The easiest thing people can do to help support artists and creatives is just talk about the artist/art. Word of mouth is such a powerful thing and many underestimate it. Social media is exhausting when we are told we need to put out more and more content but sharing a creatives work on social media platforms is another easy way to be supportive.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I think my biggest goal is just to entertain myself and hope that others will also be entertained by the visuals I create. We are always our own biggest critic and If I feel happy putting out the work I’m doing then I hope others will also enjoy it.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydrosoniclightshow/
• Facebook: https://Facebook.com/hydrosoniclightshow
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@hydrosoniclightshow?si=_tigQgtezmopxxNz

Image Credits

Image of me looking down at my 35mm slides – Sara Giroux
B/W photo of me looking into camera – Takehiko Nakafuji

All other photos by Tim Nystrom