Hawkwind and LASERS

[Banthai]

Hi all
The mighty Hawkwind ( which most will remember from the classic song Silver Machine ) played at the Hawkfest festival
in devon a couple of weeks ago, Hawkfest is a Ticket only 3 day festival for members of the Hawkwind fan club. and features Hawkwind, ex members and other bands that they have been asociated over the years, this year saw over a thousand fans and family enjoy the sunshine and music and camping
My band "Underground zero" was asked to play at the festival so i decided to take the Banthai beast there for a bit of a warm up
Neil and Marie from "Chaos Ilumination" are Hawkwinds resident Lightshow technicians ( neil frquents these forums and they will both be at the next uk meet )
they were providing the Lighting rig and Projection systems for the whole event, neil had suggested that he may even take his own laser....
Now this i was lookin forward to ...
neils laser consists of a 3.5W Coherent Purelight Star white light laser, with EyeMagic EMS4000 scanners, an 8 channel PCAOM , and a Pangolin LD2000
and a lot of pipework for water cooling etc... this was going to be a big problem for neil as the festival site had no running water and this beast needs 6 gallons a minute and 60 amps of 3 phase and as the festival site has no running water or lecky it looked like it could be an issue ....
Fortunately the site organisers provided a 1000 Litre water bowser and there where 2 large generators with ample power for the whole show and PA
so with the risk assesment and insurance etc in place and agreement of no Audience scanning.... BRING ON THE LASERS

well this bit of a warmup for the banthai beast ended up as one of highlights in my laser experience, we initialy had problems with water presure and struggled to get the airlocks out of the pump, neil had worked hard most of the friday but the water presure was just not enough and it looked like lasers just were not going to happen, then at the last moment one of the crew "did something" and the presure interlock gave us a green light ( this senario repeated itself over the 3 days, just when we thought its not happening suddenly everything fired up " thankyou laser God" )
so we ended up doing a 1 hour show for the headlineing bands friday and saturday night and a 2 hour show on sunday, My band underground zero was closing the festival on sunday night so i was pleased that everything held out for our set,
I have to also add that even though the lasers looked good and everyone compimented them ... if it was not for the rest of the visuals provided by Chaos including the solar effects, videos from marie, and the moving head stuff from John ... the lasers on there own would have been a bit boring.
big thankyou for the chaos guys a very enjoyable weekend
some photos at the bottom ... and here are some clips of the internet ( some are filmed on mobile phones so sound etc not that good )

clips
Hawkwind "spirit of the age" the lasers start at about 2:50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385vi2nUpoM

Hawkwinds Technicians of spaceship hawkwind "Assassins of Allah"
again lasers kick in at about 2:45
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnx_HO9rsOM
quick clip of Underground Zero with both lasers posted by neil
http://flickr.com/photos/chaosillumi...n/photostream/

[thesk8nmidget]

looks like a fun event!

thanks for sharing!

[Insanity]

Hey Karl,

That looks mega... 2 questions:

What is the spec of the Banthai Beast? (I know I am wide open for one of your quipps here)

Will the Banthai Beast be making an appearance at UKLEM? (Once again, wide open)....

Cheers
Mark

[Banthai]

Hi mark ....

the spec and a thread following the build is here

http://photonlexicon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3844&highlight=banthai+beast

I now have the Laserworld 50k galvos fitted as i was so impressed by your rig .... i had to get a pair ... and they certainly proved excellent

side by side with the gas laser ... diode pumped shows its weakness .... 150mw of blue could be more to get a better ballance and the red is a laserever diode so its a bit wide and divergent .... the gas with its lovely white and pastel colours shows that the extra effort is well worth it

and yep it will be there at the meet ....


all the best ..... Karl

[Jem]

Hi Karl

That looks fantastic, I have to confess to being a bit of a closet Hawkwind fan

No doubt i'll hear all about it on Sunday morning as i'm giving Neil and Marie a lift down to UKLEM. See you there.

Cheers

Jem

[Banthai]

im sure ... you will hear lots ....

it was one wicked weekend ....

im sure they will tell you about the people that stole the cooling water from the laser tank rather than wait for the fresh drinking water even though there was signs on the tank saying not fit for human consumption, as the bowser previosly contained liquidised turkey meat the tank was not as clean as it should have been .... im guessing it led to plenty of action in the porta loos ..... and that leads to another story but i will leave that to them to tell


all the best .... Karl

[Insanity]

Karl,

I just looked at the build, you have put some serious work in there... Looks very nice and still plenty of room to get more kit in... Maybe a nice beam table????

I have a fat 635 in mine as well.. They look great for beamshows and cut through the smoke a lot better than some of the other red wavelengths.. I was surprised and pleased with how bright it looked in a club...

Look forward to seeing it and of course you at the meet...

I have my Poly 20 running on DMX now and have only one minor problem to work out, but that's for another day...

See ya Sunday
Mark

[Banthai]

Mark

it looks like plenty of space on the bench but after i fitted the safety shutter ( GM20 ) and i have to fit another GM20 and the poly20 wheel that space is all gonna go the only thing i think i would change at the moment is the Blue .... maybe for one of those 400mw Medialas blue diodes ( when funds permit )

and yes its only good for beam shows with that red .... but personaly i think thats the way the laser show business is going, with the cheapness of bright video projectors now the public just dont think laser images and graphics are anything special ( thats my impression and im guessing others have different opinions ) ok ... maybe bilboard projections etc come into there own with a laser ... but a dolphin swimming on the wall of a night club does not have the wow factor anymore like it used to



Back to the beast...
but the killer is the wieght .... that 1/2 inch by 18" by 19" plate makes it a 2 man lift to get it off the stand, well i can lift it on with a struggle but its getting it down at the end of the night and thats without any beer

yep im looking forward to seeing you and everyone again .... and this is the first time i'm bringing some kit so im looking forward to it



all the best .... Karl

[soforene]

How will us mere mortals compete with all you "Big Boys"?

My laser taste buds are tingling already !

[QUAZAR]

I did a few gigs with Hawkwind using my DPSS before Neil got the white light.
I also remeber (vividly) their Xenon Codex tour about 20 years ago. They were using (approx) 5W of argon and crowd scanning in large theatres. I was somewhat . That is probably what got me started in lasers.