CYGN-B

[Greg]

The fun part is that for any combination of channels, any image source, any passage of joystick or colormod can be played live over simply by setting a record enable flag and the in / out points.

[ronhip]

Like WOW! Just WOW! It looks like you have just about everything in there! Color-mod, static offsets, dogloids, direct and triangle audio-mod, chopping. I'm not sure if I saw spirals. Were you using any fixed cycloids?

You've done an amazing job of recreating. It gave me goosebumps!

Ron

[laserist]

Nice, it looks like you've recreated the tools, and made it iterative. That's huge!

[Greg]

I'm not sure if I saw spirals. Were you using any fixed cycloids?

You are right. The KQO and the CYGN-B make no appearance in the previously posted excerpts video.

I'm using the following method to get the shows up to a default playable version by using placeholder cycloids that immediately identify the image source. This happens as follows:

Circles and default values for sticks and dials are recorded for everything in the first pass.

The fixed cycloid that looks ok in most cases is the star. The KQO looks out of place a lot of the time when it is the default. Suggestions as to which parts of my posted content should be KQO are welcome. So seeing a star means the image source is fixed cycloids.

Seeing A CYGN-B digital square means the variable cycloid image source is being called for on the bus. Use of this source can be seen in the first of these extra Rush excerpts I meant to include in the first post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij5LvCATDFY

The five danube, audiomod, and dogloid image sources are recorded in consecutive passes and can easily be identified.

This leaves circles as the "fixed cycloid" for the spiral generator. For example, the nice ellipses and chopper with joystick group option seen near the end of the above linked excerpts is using features of the spiral board.

Something I wondered, and have since confirmed, is that a lot of time the spiral reset is held on and the invert image at full size is used, and diamond is frequently used with this to flatten one axis.

Also here's a repost of the system block diagram.

[Greg]

There was a beautiful number named Dan's Tune that was in Laserium Starship. It consisted of long synthesizer chords. In a sense it was one of the simplest pieces of music I've ever worked with in my time with Laser Images. Still it was the only one I needed to count to hit the transitions in the first few weeks. If I fell behind on the count the head would reconfigure - off tempo - and I would look like a buffoon. The imagery involved crossfading among four or five Lumia. The Lumia were much more complex than the music. Still it was a great piece. But no way was the inherently involved an evolving Lumia creating the slowly decaying chords in the music.

One of the things I saw when doing live laser shows was eventually I got to the point where I could really add complexity to a number that I'd had trouble hitting the basic steps in the beginning. What I discovered was as I increased the complexity the response went down. When I dialed back the complexity the audience came back. If somehow the imagery is alive it really should IMO visibly create all the music. That sounds hard, and really difficult to watch. There's a musician named Mike Dawes who does a single act showing off his skills as a finger style guitarist. He adds a lot of percussion on top of the notes using the guitar as a percussion instrument, and there's no way I could keep up trying to get the lasers to create the music that just that one guy manages to create once he really gets started. And between leaving the audience behind and an absolute preference for a human in the loop to keep it interesting I don't see it...

Ivan use to talk about Laserium and "Cosmic Awareness". Lot's of people use analogies and poetry to describe what to them are a deep meanings. The thing about analogies and poetry in communication is you're using words that are often totally untrue to communicate an emotion. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm just painfully litteral at times.

I'm quoting words here from a concurrent thread. I've always treasured my memories of those crossfades. Not to mention the uniquely magnificent piece of music, Dan's Tune. I did get to perform this for weekend audiences for a few months in 1981.

I think it began with a (dichroic?) turret effect that shimmered on the lower threshold of visibility and eventually grew in brightness and did that unique focusing thing that the turret did. Then there was crystal dimple, which was like passing through plasma from a centralized nebula. Coming in with the piano would fade a very slowly rotating X pattern diffraction effect. This effect, by the way, cannot look good without true yellow. Finally at the music taking flight emotionally moment about half way through the song, the rolling dimple tube would take over.

I remember preferring an effect as the last chord sweeps up, bringing up a bit of slowly oscillating colormod so the waves appeared to reach forward and back with ever increasing quickness until everything fades out in a greyish white.

[ronhip]

Greg and Brian,

I think the piece you are thinking about is "Silk Aurora" which was in Starship, and not "Dan's Tune" which was in Laserium II (both pieces by Laserium's Danny Sofer...)

I put a link below to a compressed folder containing both songs.

Ron

https://media-archive.exploratorium....ring/KVWW4MCJ3

[laserist]

You're right. My mistake.

[kecked]

Someone is selling a functional laserium unit on eBay. Likely one of you but if not there you have it.

[laserist]

Ron (ronhip) might give some insights into that hardware. It was long after my time.

[ronhip]

Choreographics was the "mass produced" (a few 10's of units) computer that was the successor to the "Sage" graphics engine used only in the studio. Sage was the successor to the DYNADIG card in the console which was the successor of the DOG card, though all these devices had functions not included in their progeny.

Choreographics consisted of a nubus-based Mac (we used a Mac IIsi at Morrison Planetarium), a nubus card, and the Choreographics software. The software was queued from a SMPTE track on the ADAT tape players. Choreographics handled basic 2D and 3D animation in real time. Imagery was NOT stored on tape, but was generated live. It was shockingly reliable, so kudos to the team at LII!

The system on eBay, though rather high priced, is one of these systems plus what looks to be a home-grown ILDA projector (~2 watt RGB). It might be difficult keeping it alive because you'd have to keep it supplied with nubus machines as they lived out their natural lives, and that would be increasingly difficult.

I do have copies of the Choreographics software, manual, and all the imagery files I could grab on short visits to LII in LA. Should I post the manual for those interested?

Ron