Not Technology

[laserist]

So IMO laser shows are about putting photons on a screen or at least in the air in an interesting and hopefully entertaining or even captivating way. It's easy to get all tied up in the software and/or the hardware involved, but when you get down to the performance it's all about how you use that stuff. Good, bad, and way too much indifferent. There's a whole lot of reinventing the wheel in the laser business. Is it time to talk about design patterns?

[Stiffler]

By 'design patterns', do you mean actual show content?

[laserist]

By 'design patterns', do you mean actual show content?

No, I mean show "design patterns", an abstraction of what you're doing that works, or works when mixed with "this", or perhaps just doesn't ever work.

For example Chuck Rau said to me that he could do a better show using a time line than he could ever do live. l said, well you could do a more complex show... Complexity for complexity's sake often doesn't work - you just lose the audience.

[WookieBoy]

I'd agree with you here.
You can do much more complex stuff from a timeline than you can live... at least in my very limited experience with pango QShow and beyond... hence my recent experiments with control via my my DMX lighting desk.

I think that from my point of view anyways, I'd like to have a more 'buskable' way of controlling things...
Q stacks and pallet triggers assignable to multiple zones on the fly are where I'm trying to get to at the moment.. and this may well be achievable with the more advanced programming features in Beyond being triggered by ART-NET from a lighting console...

But I don't as yet have the experience to work it out, or the free time to learn all the programming language in Beyond. :-/

[Bradfo69]

I don't suspect there is any question that you can do a better show on a time line than you can live. If I have weeks of time to sit and create a show and build it utilizing a timeline and add, tweak, manipulate, learn things, and rehearse it, versus a series of split second decisions in mid event, of course the timeline show is going to be better.

I'm not exactly certain where you are going with this. Are you asking how I (we) set up a show? Depends on the show... running beams for a prom or a wedding while people are dancing may be totally different than a theater style seating plantetarium type experience. Artistically a lot more will go into the seated, "sit and watch" show. Rear screen projection, beams, lumia, mirror bounces, wash effects, diffraction effects, other non-coherent lighting, etc. For example, although it's a laser show, when the helicopters come in during Another Brick in The Wall, I've run slowly moving white beam moving head lights from up high behind the audience to add the "searchlight" effect washing over them.

[laserist]

I'm not sure anyone "learns" anything sitting alone in front of a computer timeline putting a show together. Much the same as I haven't learned much sitting in front of a computer writing code. The learning part and the sitting and doing part are two different things. The concept of design patterns began in architecture and was embraced by the programming community - I'm wondering if we know enough about what we're doing to generate an insight or two...

[Bradfo69]

By learning things, I simply meant discovering how to use the features built into the software in the first place. You just don't sit down in front of say, Quickshow or Beyond the first time and know exactly how to use it without experimenting to see what this does or that does. That, in and of itself, is a learning process and what I was referring to.

[swamidog]

your milage may vary, but i've learned a ton in both of your examples.

programming shows on time lines gives me a repeatable environment where i can experiment with effects and optimize complexities, layers, and maskings so i can make things that are visually enchanting, but still scanable. i, and many other show creators, don't have access to dedicated spaces and racks of equipment to make and perform laser shows. it also give me a method to share my content with others.

you have failed to mention that many laserium shows contain pre-sequenced content.

some artists choose to perform live and some choose to create pre-sequenced shows. both are equally valid. i have seen plenty of live laser shows that were just a bored operator twitching knobs on oscillator boxes vaguely in time to the music and i have seen plenty of timeline sequenced shows that are just ransom notes of canned abstracts and cartoon clip art.

i do IT work as my day job and this includes quite a bit of computer programming. every time i touch code i learn, or reinforce the lessons i've learned in prior sessions.

things like how to break complex problems into multiple easily solved steps. how to creation solutions that are robust and elegant. how to create libraries and routines that apply to the need at hand, but are portable enough to apply to tomorrow's needs. if you're not learning while you're doing, than you're doing it wrong.

I'm not sure anyone "learns" anything sitting alone in front of a computer timeline putting a show together. Much the same as I haven't learned much sitting in front of a computer writing code. The learning part and the sitting and doing part are two different things. The concept of design patterns began in architecture and was embraced by the programming community - I'm wondering if we know enough about what we're doing to generate an insight or two...

[laserist]

While I'm sitting in front of a computer writing code I'm not learning. I'm writing code. It's when I stop writing code, and look something up, or I'm reading someone else's code, or debugging my own code, or flow charting the distribution logic for an MRP system that I need to write - that's when I'm learning something. The same thing happens when doing a live show or sitting down in front of a timeline. While you're actually performing a show live or creating a show on a time line there's little or no learning going on. In a live show you really should be prepared, and you're really busy. (If you've done the same show a couple of hundred times in the last few months there's the urge to toss in the random thing or three dozen, but you really should do your practicing when there isn't a paying audience watching... And back in my day (and in the shows I did recently) we didn't have any preprogrammed sequences - I was still at the mercy of the old 351 data channel (160 bits) that could only control rygb gain, xy gain, offset gain, course spiral in & out rate, spiral sweep, housekeeping, and switching between image busses - all the rest kept the laserist pretty busy.) In a recorded show there's nothing real time going on, so it's when you're sitting there watching what you did that you might learn a little bit. Better yet would be watching an audience watch your show. That's where timelines kick ass - watching an audience watch the show you sweated over. (If you can avoid the urge to rationalize why the audience is wrong! ;-) For live shows that's where having multiple Laserists at the same venue kicked ass - you could learn from each other's successes and failures in front of an audience. But hey feel free to pretend you're learning while you're banging on a keyboard, clicking this &/or that, or even twiddling knobs.

All that said, I'm really not interested in talking about technology, or the same old "Is it Live or is it Memorex?" crap that everyone seems to want to substitute for a meaningful conversation about how to avoid the crap and find the beauty…

[swamidog]

it is entirely unclear to me what you're actually interested in talking about. please elaborate.

All that said, I'm really not interested in talking about technology, or the same old "Is it Live or is it Memorex?" crap that everyone seems to want to substitute for a meaningful conversation about how to avoid the crap and find the beauty…