A frame from Protoplasm: amber and ruby liquid pools with dark openings, scattered red droplets and cyan accents against black.

Protoplasm

Light you can play with.

Liquid Light Show

Free on Apple TV, iPhone & iPad

Get it on iOS Get it on Apple TV Play on the web

Mac coming soon · Web preview requires WebGPU.

Protoplasm on Apple TV shows a single dish and has no audio input or music reactivity. Watch the Artist perform, or take the dish with the Siri Remote.

Mineral oil and dyed water in a glass dish, lit by a hot lamp on an overhead projector, simulated light by light. Tip your phone and the oil runs downhill. Twist two fingers to turn the dish, press the glass, pinch to change the focus. Leave it alone and it performs on its own, the way a 1960s operator would.

The picture is light, not paint. Oil blobs bend the beam like lenses, dark rims form where it bends too steeply to reach the screen, and bright lines gather where it converges.

How it works

Three projectors, one disc

Protoplasm simulates the overhead projectors of a 1960s liquid light show. Each one has a hot lamp, a glass dish of dyed water and oil, a top glass, a lens and a gel wheel. The show opens with three of them on one disc, and their light adds.

Three overhead projectors on a wooden rig, numbered 1 to 3, each throwing a colored beam through haze onto one disc on a screen.
  1. 1dish at 0°
  2. 2dish at 138°
  3. 3dish at −97°

Each dish is turned to its own angle, so the three images land on the disc at different angles and add where they overlap.

Your hands

  • Turn

    two-finger twist

    The dish turns with your fingers and the liquid lags behind. Let go mid-turn and the dish keeps turning.

  • Tilt

    tip the phone

    Oil runs toward the low edge. Hold the phone still and the dish settles level in about 2 seconds.

  • Lean

    tip past 35°

    Tip harder and the top plate leans on the low rim, pressing deeper as you tip, fully at 60°.

  • Press

    long-press

    The glass pushes the film thin under your finger. Lift, and the liquid flows back.

  • Focus

    pinch

    Spread two fingers to soften the focus, and the bright lines of gathered light spread out. Pinch in to sharpen the outlines.

Materials

  • 01 OilFloats in the water and forms lenses that bend the light. Carries dye.Refractive index 1.48

  • 02 InkDye carried in the water. It colors the light by absorbance: magenta over cyan gives blue.Water: refractive index 1.36

History

Pressed Between Glass

How a classroom projector, a dish of mineral oil and a bottle of dye became the light show of the 1960s ballrooms, told with working demos of the physics Protoplasm is built on.

Read the essay