Holiday lights

Flames and foil

Color-flame candles with a backdrop of aluminum foil.

Solitary flame

Candles on a glass table

Vessels filled with light

These are essentially small, static versions of Lumia compositions. The light source is a Brightspot.

Three candles

These birthday-cake-type candles contain chemicals (probably some of the same ones at work here) which add color to their flames.

Chemically enhanced flames

Strange luminous and transparent entities found amidst the branches of a small coniferous tree

More below the fold:

Glass rose with plasma light

Visual music and digital dreams

Lumia is an art form invented by Thomas Wilfred in 1919, consisting of light refracted through glass of different colors and forms, creating ethereal abstract forms. Wilfred created a device he dubbed the Clavilux, from the Latin for "keyed light". This device was to light as a musical instrument is to sound; continuing the musical analogy, it had a turntable that rotated glass disks like records.

A modern analog to Lumia might be the abstract compositions of the screensaver Electric Sheep, created by feedback between millions of computers "dreaming" in sleep mode.

Electric Sheep screenshot from Wikimedia Commons.

Videos of both can be seen below the fold.

Halloween Hell-mouth

The honeycomb-like thing inside is a glass candle holder.