Not Technology

[laserist]

i absolutely agree with this. we had some discussions in another thread about capturing and saving live performance data and being able to add it to sequencer timelines. i am all over this idea.

That's great - the easist way to stand apart is to actually stand apart!

[laserist]

You're back at the beginning. You've played around with what are now called lumia. These are purely optical effects that can be as simple as sending a laser beam through slowly rotating piece of shower glass, but also more complex stuff. You've played with spinning mirrors, and you discover galvanometers. There aren't any personal computers yet. You don't know what a quadrature oscillator is - yet. What do you do? A couple of surplus sine wave generators let you play with lissajous figures. There are a bunch of stable forms but once you get past loops, figure eights, and a fast roll you've mined most of the ore. Still the lissajous loops and figure eights have a lot of audience appeal if you can control them smoothly. The original Laserium used both successfully to The Blue Danube by Holst. Simple slowly rotating lissajous loops where the choreography was much more about subtle gain and symmetry changes than playing with the lissajous beat frequency. What we came to call Danube Loops and Eights showed up over and over in Laserium shows. Ivan didn't like colormod or chopper and the Mark 4 couldn't do z axis rotation in Danube so there were a lot of areas to explore left for the future.

A friend once bemoaned that "kids" "today" get an entire drum kit for Christmas and never get the chance to discover that there's a world of sounds that you COULD get out of a single snare drum. One of the many mistakes that have always been available is failure to understand the vast potential of simplicity. Overkill - Complexity for complexity's sake is often our refuge. Unneeded - Unwanted - often completely inappropriate complexity is our refuge because we don't know any better. We're geeks. We're programmer artists with the emphasis on being a programmer and never on being an artist. But if someone describes what we do as programmer art - what they're really saying is bad art...

[WookieBoy]

Yes. This is true of lighting design as well, especially on big budget arena tours.
I've given up following the progression of the 'how many sharpies can we fit on this gig' attitude of current band's LD's.
It depressing. More and more gear and less and less 'art'.

However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. A few shows are now splitting the usual LD/operator & programmer roles so the LD needs to know little or nothing about the control technology and the programmer/operator needs to know little or nothing about the art and design.

I think this will mean that we start to see more art and less 'spectacle' in the near future.

Maybe this is a model that could and, dare I say, should be 'ported' across to the laser show business?
If a show desingner can concentrate on what they want, rather than how to achieve it, will this lead to a return of the art you think has been lost?

[laserist]

Laser Images' model separated the choreographer in the studio and laserist in the planetarium. But the laserist wasn't just an operator. The laserist was make it or break it as far as the show was concerned. If you reduce the laserist's role to that of an operator who pushes the start button at the right time - you've also eliminated any real ownership of the performance.

[WookieBoy]

That's not quite what I was getting at.

If the 'designer' says "I want it to do this look' the programmer tries to make it happen.
That way, the designer isn't limiting his vision by what he 'knows' it possible from the technology and can concentrate on making 'art'
It's the 'programmer's' job to turn the technology into the 'designer's' vision.

I think that in this way you'll see less of what is possible and more making the "impossible" happen...

Or maybe not.

However, I'm sure there'd be less technology for technology's sake...

[laserist]

Well I'm limiting myself to the planetarium "pattern" - I think you're describing something more theatrical/concert like. In the Laserium model the choreographer worked side by side with the laserist - but the laserist in the field could toss it all.

[WookieBoy]

Why limit yourself to anything?
I think that's the point I'm trying to make.
Why is a theatrical or concert model not applicable?
Afterall, it's the most accessible model to a modern audience...
Not that I'm saying these models are a perfect way of doing things... just maybe there should be more consideration of other 'models' and what from them could be applicable to what you're trying to achieve...
Don't limit yourself with technology or art or venue or historically what you did or audience expectations or anything... and then see what can be created from that blank white page...

That could be really exciting!

[laserist]

Why limit myself to a planetarium "pattern"?

One: I've never seen a successful application of laser effects in any other venue that wasn't simply a supporting environmental effect to enhance the actual reason for being there.

Two: The planetarium environment imposes significant limitations on what works and doesn't work in that space.

Three: The cost associated with the multitude of possibilities that could be done - but perhaps not done well in a planetarium - are so much more justifiable in a 5000+ seat opera house.

Four: I don't have a vast amount of experience in those other venues, and don't necessarily understand their unique limitations.

Five: In part this is an attempt to point out there has been an example of significant commercial success under the dome, and to point out that mediocrity is expensive.

Six: I'd like to reignite successful laser shows of old & new, and hope to identify some like minded zealots...

[WookieBoy]

Ok.
Fair enough.
I'll bow out and leave you too it then.

I've obviously totally misunderstood what was being discussed.

[laserist]

I got my start watching (and later doing) laser shows back in the years predating the personal computer. The first computer at Laser Images was a 6 board wire wrapped master's thesis project. It used the same 6502 chip used in the early Atari, Apple II and Commodore computers. At 1MHz, 8 bits, and no floating point processors - it screamed what PC's couldn't do. In 1981 Laser Images decided to put a computer in their machines. They picked a variant of the 6502, some RAM, some UV-EPROM, and 8 D/A converters. It mostly did static and "dynamic" offsets. Dynamic offsets would be something like a "pong" kind of motion. (Go ahead - I'll wait while you look it up…) It also did "popcorn", a random sequential offset - it could be triggered too - popcorn worked particularly well with drums. There were other dynamic thingys that were also handy. It could also do some digital imagery, but the tiny memory limit, 4 X/Y channels, 1 MHz clock, and non feedback scanners made this imagery rather weak. But nobody really minded, I never met a Laserist with Laser Images that didn't despise laser cartoons.

Things have changed, cheap computers start at 1GHz, 64 bit memory buses, multi GByte memory, pipeline processing, multiple processor cores, and blazing coprocessors. Doing everything in software for real time output has been a reality for years. Still there was something about doing it live. It certainly wasn't that we could do more than we could potentially program. So what was it? I've said in the past it was about hearing the audiences respond, but I think I was wrong. When I listen to music - I can grasp the theme - I have a handle on how it's going to progress. I have this thing going on in my head that's both experiencing and anticipating the music. Even when the music goes somewhere unexpected, the music carries me along, and let's me catch up. Most of the "shows" I see today have beautiful imagery that has some small relationship to (some small part of) the music, but nothing like the effect of the music itself. The complexity of the imagery actually diminishes the effect of the music for me. The imagery is put at the forefront. It draws most of my bandwidth away from the music. The experience becomes an entirely intellectual search for meaning and (pardon the pun) coherence in the imagery with the art of the musician drowned out. Somebody on this site mentioned that Billy Joel has forbidden his music to be used for laser shows - ever wonder why?..