Born in December 1942, Joshua White's parents were first-generation American Jews whose families fled Russia to escape the Czarist pogroms.

[3] [citation needed] White attended Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York's Greenwich Village, a haven for left wing intellectuals during the time of McCarthyism.

[4][5] White often spent afternoons at the MoMA, where he became particularly fascinated by a small kinetic sculpture titled Vertical Sequence II, Opus 137, 1941, a "Lumia" by the self-taught artist Thomas Wilfred (1889-1968).

In 1965, White apprenticed himself to the multi-media artist Bobb Goldsteinn, who presented a weekly series of downtown loft parties[11] featuring lights, a mirror ball, slides and films all projected on multiple screens.

In 1967, Sensefex was hired by the promoter Bill Graham for his new East Coast presentation "The San Francisco Scene", to be staged in Toronto and featuring Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.

[14] White was exposed for the first time to what was going on in San Francisco; one attraction in particular was Jerry Abrams & Glenn McKay's "Headlights", a Bay Area light show.

[22][23][24] After touring Europe with The Chambers Brothers in the summer of 1969, the Joshua Light Show performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, Fillmore at Tanglewood, and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

[34] He also directed for television the National Theater of the Deaf's version of Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales,[35] narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave, and a special with Alvin Ailey celebrating the music of Duke Ellington.

[citation needed] Between 1974 and 2006, White directed a wide range of broadcast and cable television: The California Jam,[32] Neil Diamond Live in Australia,[38] The Mickey Mouse Club,[39] the Jerry Lewis Telethon,[40] Delta House,[41][42] Pirates of Penzance Live in Central Park,[43] Laurie Anderson's Oh Superman,[44][45] Max Headroom, Encyclopedia for HBO, Club MTV, Inside the Actors Studio and Seinfeld.

[51][52] Beginning with a series of performances at the Anthology Film Archives in 2004,[53] the Joshua Light Show performs at festivals, museums and venues such as the Skirball Center,[54] Abrons Art Center,[55] the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit,[56] the Hayden Planetarium,[57] the Barbican Centre, UC Davis, and the San Francisco Exploratorium.

[59]" In 2018 White was commissioned by Yale University to create a film about modern work inspired by Thomas Wilfred's Lumia Machine.

In 2019 White produced special psychedelic material for the rock band Metallica with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.