Old fart's comments, experiences and insights

[lasermaster1977]

https://photonlexicon.com/forums/sho...911#post362911

I appreciate and find it very interesting what others have experienced, if only to learn of shared common or similar experiences.

In retrospect, as someone in the right place...a 40' Spitz 512 planetarium, at the right time, not near any of the large, Laserium targeted planetariums, being one of several involved with the aural and visual magic of producing astronomy related planetarium shows, using an array of different special lighting effects and pan/tilt/zoom slide projectors, orrery projectors, with the right artistic and technical skills to cope with the planetarium directors request to "figure out how to do laser effects, here's a Metrologic .5mW HeNe". I was lucky and the next 12 years were enthralling, exciting, at times a bit stressful and terrifying, but always rewarding from an artistic performance standpoint.

On creating laser shows, planetarium based or otherwise, picking the soundtrack special effects and musical numbers, planning, experimenting and choosing how they come together, as a sequential aural experience was every much as important as the ebb and flow of the visual laser effects that accompanied the eclectic music. I got to decide these things, many times with suggestions from others, once with a committee of friends, that today would be called "influencers", spent hours with me listening to hoards of albums to derive a final eclectic soundtrack that became my signature show, "Laser Fusion". With nearly every planetarium laser show, regardless of the music used there was one ubiquitous sole who shouted out in the dark "RUSH!" I agree with @TheHermit, a performance soundtrack must have dynamics of all kinds, temporal, amplitude, mood, harmonics and dissonances.

The vibe between me, the person moving knobs, switches and sliders, and my assistant knob/switch twiddler and string puller, to render a visual color experience or spatial mood on the dome or screen and the audiences' real time reaction was as rewarding to me as it was for them. Playing a laser harmonograph to a music soundtrack is no different than drummer jamming with a guitarist and other musicians. At the beginning and for quite a few years, every show was a impromptu, ad-libbed laser jam. After a ton of repetitions every show eventually had well rehearsed guidelines for what followed, but every show was unique like @TheHermit alluded to. I was lucky, I got to choose.

Later, even when being involved with a few rock concerts or tours, Showco/Varilight typically was the sound & lighting company that sub'd out for lasers, I would be asked by whom every hired me to "come up with some visual thing during the bridge" of some number(s) or an intro, or do some kind of beam work on this number. It was left to me to decide what to do for a given time slot. I don't recall a time that I was overruled. That was true most if not all of the time even with corporate show clients. I was lucky.

That's my take, as of today.

[swamidog]

Come on Folks! Let's all have a good ole chin wag to share our artistic philosophies.
Where's that GOAT ILDA awarded swamidog? I reckon he's got a thing or two to contribute to this thread.🤷*♂️
Roj

you'll probably regret invoking me.

i have not found my projection space and i hate posting laser videos on youtube. we all know how they *should* look, and we all know it's impossible to capture the laser light and the experience.

i have some philosophies i try to embed in my shows.. and remember, i'm not making shows to fill planetarium seats (although that might be fun). i'm making shows to explore my take on the art, and no one is obligated to take that journey with me, but they might like it if they do.

i want abstracts to feel like life forms. living things that follow natural laws. even though they may be laws that we cannot understand. i want abstracts to have mass and intention and shows to have a narrative. i'm not interested in making laser screen savers.

i spend a lot of time worrying about how and why a thing comes onto the screen and how and why it leaves. how does an abstract transition into another abstract? how does it interact?

these little things. these lifeforms, what's their backstory?

i want to make the light that makes the sounds. not the light that reacts to the sounds. these are stories we're telling. think about the narrative, the emotion, and the transitions. build the scenes so when there's a musical event, the change in abstracts makes sense and flows.

i want people to look at my work and say: "holy crap. i've never seen that before, but... of course that's the thing that had to happen at that time".

center symmetry is easy and default, but should not be a constant.

blackout is an emotion and a complexity.

the audience doesn't understand how tricky a thing is do to. they understand how a thing makes them feel.

be true to the art that moves you and comes from your heart. the audience can tell when it's a lie.

i am probably full of bullshit, but that's ok.

[swamidog]

[COLOR=#333333]
It's pleasure to walk in your footsteps. Just watched your attached video. IMHO, it is one of your best.

Roj

no sir! i'm just following in your footsteps and the footsteps of all you folks who invented the art and brought it to world. you guys are responsible for my love of this art form and i'm just trying to pass it on a little bit.

thanks for kudos on the show. i'm really happy with how it came together and i think it reflects some of the philosophies i mentioned earlier.

i can't wait to see your abstract generator in action!

[swamidog]

The idea of designing the imagery to somehow give the impression of being alive and creating the the music strikes me as beyond the reality of the laser projectors I've known, and somehow feels like an attempt to appropriate the musician's work.

i don't agree with either of those statements, but i am curious to hear more details on why you feel that way.

[swamidog]

Oh, you mean something like Mohini Dey's percussive bass, Brian? 😱
JS

holy crap, that was an awesome piece....

two amazing musicians just nailing it, but the story isn't in the music. it's in the musicians sassing each other, both musically and with their expressions and body language.

and then she started chanting tablas and i swooned.

but... i would never make that piece in laser. it's not something i could give justice to within the frameworks of my style and my show philosophies. maybe someone else could nail it, but, as you say, it doesn't have the right vibe for laser.

i love a lot of music and throw a lot of music away. i'm getting better at selecting music, but i still have a directory full of false starts. i've been enjoying music that's more atmospheric, like the last piece i posted. music with box cars of tension that fires your neurons even before turning the lasers on. pieces that are less rhythmic so i don't get distracted beat counting and i can focus on the feel instead of the math.

[swamidog]

absolutely! there's been a number of updates and user requests implemented. i've encouraged everyone to reach out for training / help / features.

no control system is right for everyone, but the radiator is clearly a console even if it's not the right console for you.

A couple of hours isn't much time to get the hang of a different control 'console' that's decades more modern than what your were used to, don't you think, Brian?
Fresh out of kickstarter is a worst case scenario to judge, as well, IMO. I'm sure that it has been upgraded and developed dramatically since then. I've seen noticeable improvements to its capabilites, just from watching the videos.
Let's not still dog the 'dog's product today, eh?
Ahh, yes.. Oxygene, another fav, prior to China.
Overhead network of 2 linear diff gratings, cross fading to the rhythm, while panning horizonatlly in opposite direction. Wallpaper at a trade show.
I also assisted Jarre's Paris based laser crew, Patrice and Bernard, with the setup when he did his London docklands gig, with the laser harp. Was horrified that they pulled their cooling water straight out of the canal behind the stage.
😎

[lasermaster1977]

Sorry that this thread did not go as well as I intended. I removed all but my original post in effort to remove the original Title and found I was successful in renaming the original title.

[lasermaster1977]

Just found these YT's. Take me back to the old days and why the term "Harmonographics" implies both aural and visual harmonies. I used to "listen" to my early console's XY outputs and be enthralled just as much with the XY plotted visuals. I used to spend hours and hours entranced with the Lissajous images on my "high speed" o'scope and frustrated by the low pass response of the galvos (except for their harmonic resonance "ringing"). The first video is very nice, but they are all interesting to watch and listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19jv0HM92kw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaTuFB5QXHo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOjld0ZcNzs

I think Swamidog has thus far come to closest to realizing compelling analogies to the o'scope images above with his LSX and Radiator expertise. And his inspiration is catching.

[lasermaster1977]

Out of curiousity I downloaded and installed the Oscilloscope emulator for Windows mentioned in the 2nd YT link I provided.

It loads with a default .wav file called "Konichiwa". When played it shows what looks to be a talking mouth. I know because I discovered the unique harmonographic XY solution to create this exact impression of a talking mouth. This discovery was a year or more before I had an Apple II to create digitized graphics and I used the "approximated talking mouth" as the visual accompaniment to the Blues Brothers "Rubber Biscuit".

It is created by using 1 X and 2 Y sine wave oscillators and modulating the sum of the 2 Y signal magnitudes. I've posted photos of my early harmonographic console here on PLF that I used to effect this. It consisted of four phase-locked sine, triangle, square oscillators. There were 2 summable X oscillators that could be independently set to harmonics (N) 1-10. Regardless of the "N" harmonic selected, their outputs were always in phase. There were 2 summable Y oscillators just like the X pair, their phases also matched each other but their phase difference to the X oscillators could be variably set with a locked difference from 0 to 360 degrees.

Only 1 X channel was used with a harmonic of "1" (45Hz) with 2 Y channels used, one with a harmonic of "1" and the other at "2". The X1 and Y1 signals were 90 degrees out of phase. By varying the signal amplitudes of the Y1 and Y2 signals the mouth changed from a horizontal line to a smile with lips closed or a slight smile with the upper and lower lips opening to various degrees. Reduce the X amplitude while using only Y of "1" and you get a vertical oval that looks like a yawn.

This was essentially a 3 slider pot mixing exercise, left hand the X axis and the right hand using one finger on each of 2 Y slide pots. Through in a bit of switch selectable low frequency amplitude modulation on the two Y channels and you get a pretty cool analog talking mouth.



What da ya want for nothing?...a rubber biscuit?
Bow, bow ,ooh

How about a harmonographic flapping butterfly? I used this as part of the accompaniment to Alan Parson's "I Robot". (also based on a 1:2 XY ratio)

[lasermaster1977]

How This Guy Builds Mesmerizing Kinetic Sculptures | Obsessed |

Tre bien! Very good.