Boyle was a creative original. “With Joan Hills, his partner since 1957, he took part in Britain’s first “happening,” which scandalised Edinburgh in 1963, developed early light shows for rock groups like Soft Machine, toured America with Jimi Hendrix and, in his lifelong project, worked with Hills and their children, Sebastian and Georgia, on events, assemblages and their extraordinary “earth pieces” – lifelike facsimiles of the surface of the Earth.”