Not Technology

[swamidog]

(points to soul destroying day job)

Been meaning to ask you how things with this one have been going.

[Bradfo69]

and a very old school effect that hasn't been done in decades.

http://youtu.be/wiBOAMFfBCM

I'm taking a stab.... mercury, gallium or ferrofluid of some sort being utilized?

[Laser Wizardry]

" 15 characters"

[Laser Wizardry]

" 15 characters"

[Bradfo69]

I was already checking on prices to buy some prior to posting my guess. I was wondering about pouring some on a small speaker cone and placing it close to the projector aperature with the projector facing down. The trick would be not having the output on the ceiling!

[swamidog]

the better approach is to use an indium/gallium mix.. assuming you can conquer the problem of the glass silvering from the indium.

I was already checking on prices to buy some prior to posting my guess. I was wondering about pouring some on a small speaker cone and placing it close to the projector aperature with the projector facing down. The trick would be not having the output on the ceiling!

[CountFunkula]

the better approach is to use an indium/gallium mix.. assuming you can conquer the problem of the glass silvering from the indium.

I've been working on that one for a few months, on and off. I've also gone in the direction of "hmmm...lemme EMBRACE these glass-wetting properties, they're kinda neat!"...especially on very thin glass, like microscope cover slides. I think I may need to bust it out again and take some experiment-shots!

Galinstan is super-cool stuff, and without a cruddy surface-oxide layer it's MORE reflective than Hg!

BE CAREFUL WITH IT. It corrodes aluminum in a most dramatic fashion and the by-products react violently with water.

[absolom7691]

Brian,

I see what you mean and unfortunately, this has spread across most industries. We have become a throw-away society and because of this, "good enough" is good enough. A "passable" widget can be manufactured and no one seems to mind because it can be thrown away once it breaks and a new one can be had, 3 or 4 times over, cheaper than the cost of a high quality widget. It's actually hard to find something of quality, even at a premium price. I find that if I want something well built, I either need to buy vintage or go without. We have become a society of compromise when it comes to quatlity. Compromising means stretching our dollar. I see where this trickles into the planetarium show scene. Video projectors are cheaper than star projectors, they can be "thrown away" vs the costly maintenance of a high quality star projector, and any minimum wage monkey can run a computer planetarium program and thus, the prices go down. I find it unfortunate that most people are not willing to pay for quality anymore.

[AnAnonymousParty]

I remember when McDonnell Planetarium got the DigiStar, going to see it when it first started operating and thinking, "boy that thing sucks, I hope they get it tuned in and focused once they get some experience with it". They never did, apparently it was already as good as it got. The only thing that wowed the audience was a wireframe animation of a fly-thru of downtown St. Louis buildings. Did you read that, the only wow factor, during a planetarium show, wasn't the projection of stars?

Fast forward to the St. Louis Science Center, they replaced the original dome, with nice comfortable seating, with an open area where you could walk around, 'immersed in the stars'. Hardly. By then I had young kids of my own who, after taking them to see one of the 'presented' planetarium programs, responded with 'meh, the sky looks better at night at home'. Did you read that, that they got a better view of the stars from their own backyard 15 miles out of St. Louis? We never went back to another planetarium show. It's sad. When the Science Center opened I was excited about it, I even volunteered as an 'explainer' for a while, but not for long.

I was at the Science Center a while back killing some time on a Saturday. It reminded me of a shopping mall with a food court, I think there were no less than three places to eat and a Build-a-Bear workshop. Build-a-bear? Really? I dunno, maybe they come with little 'I (heart) science!' t-shirts.

I went to a couple of the recent Laserium shows and they brought back memories ... but something was missing, or was it that something was intruding? The big open area with all its distractions, extraneous light, the lack of seats, NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE THE PROJECTOR BEING RUN BY A REAL PERSON? Because of that the show seemed 'dimmer', less alive. Granted I may be a little jaded because I have access to a projector that can do very similar things (btw Brian, my friend Lulu wanted to know why you didn't do some of the stuff I do -that was kinda cool, for me anyway), maybe I have higher expectations, but when Laserium was in the dome, in the DARK and you were reclined back in a nice comfortable seat ... well the music and the light could take you places. What I remember about the audience was a lot of folks about my age or so there to see the 'magic' again, and maybe some did, but a lot had dragged their kids along who just wanted to get outta there so they could go back to playing Angry Birds or whatever the latest installment of 'short attention span theater' was offering that moment.

Is the audience the same? Is it really just a marketing challenge? Having seen my own kids grow up, how they are now and what their world is like, I see some significant differences. I read that sales of TVs are declining because the young-uns don't watch that much TV anymore. That's not saying they are just watching on devices that aren't TVs, they just aren't watching TV programming. Did you read that, kids today don't watch as much TV anymore? Tell me the audience is the same, I'm not so sure. My 21 year old daughter has never known of a time without cell phones, and is totally and utterly lost without a smart phone, always connected, all the time -'entertainment' in the palm of her hand. I heard someone on the radio (KMOX of course, I'm an old guy) talking about a study where the internet is resulting in next generations basically not being able to read, and I'm not surprised, more and more sites I visit want to show me a video clip instead of an article. I also saw something about a technology that allows you to read incredibly fast, text scrolls by a very small viewport so you don't 'waste time moving your eyes'. The times, the man said, they are a-changin' ... and us right along with 'em. How do you market to that? KSHE? Who even listens to radio anymore? Facebook? Twitter? How do you get that demographic to sit still long enough to appreciate something like Laserium?

Yikes, I didn't intend to go off on a rant but look at that! I do know that kids are still fascinated with lasers because my own kids, who grew up with me playing with lasers still love to come out to the garage and sit and watch. Maybe a 'laser show' is a hard sell BECAUSE they think they've seen one when every band they see bounces some beams around the room these days and who wants to see more of that? Who wants to go listen to recorded music and see a (essentially) slide show using lasers? Maybe that's the marketing angle, promote the laserist as a performer? Not just someone who presses 'start' and stands back but someone creating images and color and mood live and in real time? I dunno, for me that was always part of the major appeal of Laserium, shows were similar but never exactly the same. It's what made you keep coming back.

[mixedgas]

The most memorable "song" I ever saw in laser was not set to a song. Start with a totally black dome. It was a thunderstorm, with just a rain / thunder sound track, a few diffuse xenon strobes behind the dome, and a few white, but mostly 568 nm yellowish green laser lightning bolts, as graphics. Very few of the laser generated bolts. The lightning hits at random on the dome and a fraction of a second later you hear thunder, just like the real world. The trick was the staff running around the dome wearing black robes, with spray bottles of water. So light mist, lightning, thunder... I never saw the staff, we had to ask later.



Bradenton Florida... South Florida Museum, The Bishop Planetarium, about 1987.... Middle of the show.

Maybe you had to have been there, but back then 640x480 16 color RGB video was an expensive dream... RGB laser was so stimulating compared to NTSC TV on a CRT... An indoor thunderstorm, with indoor rain, just enough to tease you... Amazing.

Back then a 2D 633 nm red Ninja animation with about 7 frames of sword movement fighting a similar 488 nm blue Ninja, with a few x axis flips and a joystick movement was really something, set to Sabre Dance... Nowdays, that might intrigue a 10 year old.... It was wonderful then, because such vivid color did not exist in daily life. (Also Bradenton, wonderful show)

Call it "Audience Handling" or "Audience Manipulation", if you want return customers, you need to figure out a way to be novel and stimulating.


Steve