Glow in the Dark Lasering (The Next Generation)

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Originally Posted by buffo

HAHAH! Dude, DK doesn't even have a say in this anymore. He's been doing the glow-in-the-dark stuff at SELEM for a couple years now, but after he demo'ed his latest work at FLEM last month we pretty much told him "You are *REQUIRED* to bring this to SELEM and do a presentation on it again. If you refuse, we will come to your house and kidnap both you and the projectors and display screens."

Fortunately, he was already planning to do exactly that, so we won't have to go all Delta-Force on his ass. :)

David - thinking about setting up a demo area for you in the entrance area behind the lighting/sound booths at the Auditorium (where the doors open to the street), because it's darker there than anywhere else in the gallery. Plus we can still do the tripod thing we talked about if that works out.

Adam

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Always one of my favorite presentations

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Originally Posted by swamidog

i would have cheated by moving black masking objects around.

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There's more than one way to skin a cat and that approach works too! This older video shows some of the dual-masking approaches starting at about 5:30 (I'm not sure why youtube links with start times are played from the beginning in PL.):

https://youtu.be/b-erF4zC07M?t=5m29s

-David

ok...

so, i'm just going to spend all of selem camped out with my projector and one of your panels.

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Originally Posted by dkumpula

There's more than one way to skin a cat and that approach works too! This older video shows some of the dual-masking approaches starting at about 5:30 (I'm not sure why youtube links with start times are played from the beginning in PL.):

https://youtu.be/b-erF4zC07M?t=5m29s

-David

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Two questions:
1) How visible is the 405nm to the naked eye? To the camera it is pretty visible. Would be nice to have the glow in the dark paint reacft to a light that we can't actually see.

2) Have you tried blue (aqua) glow in the dark paint? While not as bright as green it is surprisngly good and more suitable for some themes such as romantic.

Wow, DK! I clearly lack vision. When you were first working on this a few years back, I thought it would be a novelty at best. The notion of glow-in-the-dark paint reminded me of Disney's Haunted Mansion. The room with Madame Liotta, the glow-in-the-dark wall with a single focused beam of UV light lazily moving around. I had no idea the extent of the work you were doing and what possibilities there were. With the accomplished lot of people on PL, it normally takes a lot to impress me. Mainly because most here are so talented, I kind of expect greatness. This though, wow... I am impressed. This is very cool and I am sad that I haven't really kept track of your glow-work up to this point. Very keen to see what more you bring. Again, wow!

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Originally Posted by joec

Two questions:
1) How visible is the 405nm to the naked eye? To the camera it is pretty visible. Would be nice to have the glow in the dark paint reacft to a light that we can't actually see.

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The video camera I was using picks up the beam better than I can see it. 405nm is at the far range of the visible spectrum for us, so a lot of power doesn't result in a lot of visible light. In my environment, the 405nm beams (max of ~1.5W per projector) are mostly projecting across the room in front of the viewing area so that the beams are not obvious even in a well fogged room. The easiest way to tell which projector is projecting 405nm is to look at the projectors themselves as you can see a which one is projecting violet. It isn't bright enough to be distracting though even in a fully dark room.

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Have you tried blue (aqua) glow in the dark paint? While not as bright as green it is surprisngly good and more suitable for some themes such as romantic.

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No, but it is high on my list. The blue is 1/3 as bright as the green I'm using and fades faster. Brighter is generally better, but faster fading has value. Blue is probably better for your brain to adjust to white-ish where-as green is always . . green. (Cue Kermit-the-Frog!) I treated most of the walls in Zinc sulfide the first time and this can be seen in some of my older footage. It was really nice at glowing greenish-yellow and looked almost white in an otherwise dark room. Sadly it doesn't last long enough to do anything too complicated with it, but this is also an advantage in some situations such as constantly changing abstracts.

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Originally Posted by absolom7691

Wow, DK! . . With the accomplished lot of people on PL, it normally takes a lot to impress me. Mainly because most here are so talented, I kind of expect greatness. This though, wow... I am impressed. . .

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The positive reaction is really humbling and generous. Thank you, it makes my week!

I think there are lots of possibilities for glow in the dark laser art that haven't been explored fully yet. (At least not that I know of, anyhow.) Maybe we can add it as another tool in more laserists' toolboxes.

-David

Zinc sulfide is the old glow in the dark powder, try the strontium powder, makes a world of difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz6yw3s_3ps

Also I'd try to mix the powder with acrylic clear paint and apply it as a thin coat on a window glass. Could work as a skrim for this.

It's definitely a very cool effect to "draw" an image. I'm glad to know that LSX has a means to do so as well. David's explanation on how "to do it" is spot on and something my old Apple laser system could easily do because it had a "display" command or a "draw" command, each programmed and fine tuned with a settable point-to-point delays.

I spent a good deal of time this past year, designing and building an interface for my former single-ended, one XYZ channel for scanning and blanking with an Apple IIe or IIgs. I'm close to the hardware design conclusion with a bit of software tweaking to follow. My four channel Apple XYZ system was far more robust, but this was more of a challenge.

Swami, you keep me inspired to finish up some LSX tunes I started a while back, as well.

David, your phosphorescent walls are killer!

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Originally Posted by lasermaster1977

It's definitely a very cool effect to "draw" an image. I'm glad to know that LSX has a means to do so as well. David's explanation on how "to do it" is spot on and something my old Apple laser system could easily do because it had a "display" command or a "draw" command, each programmed and fine tuned with a settable point-to-point delays.

I spent a good deal of time this past year, designing and building an interface for my former single-ended, one XYZ channel for scanning and blanking with an Apple IIe or IIgs. I'm close to the hardware design conclusion with a bit of software tweaking to follow. My four channel Apple XYZ system was far more robust, but this was more of a challenge.

Swami, you keep me inspired to finish up some LSX tunes I started a while back, as well.

David, your phosphorescent walls are killer!

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And I can't wait to see it :)

Love this!

Some food for thought... If your glow in the dark material is similar to what I've played with, red lasers should extinguish the glow immediately. I don't know how far in wavelength the behavior extends, but I was using a HeNe laser at the time
so at the very least the 635nm pointers should be in the ballpark.

But anyways, if you scan with a red right after you might get really cool effects.