Not Technology

[laserist]

To explain the lack of success of laser shows today requires a little distance. You have to step back away from your ego. Step back away from everything close to the laser show. Step back from the investment of hours, years, and dollars. Now step a little further back and consider in the abstract that the shows today suck. Mull this alternative possibility around a bit. The shows done today use software that are pretty much variations on two themes and they lean heavily on multiplexing and HEAVY chopping of the image to achieve anything. Heavy chopper is an "effect" in Laserium speak. If you use it everywhere - the whole show looks the same. You never get that Oh Wow! This is so Cool" moment more than once. Now look at how few of the "shows" actually have a - one to one - choreography with the music. At. Any. Time. The music in today's shows goes along at its tempo and the Lasers go along at something similar but there's no linkage. The laser effects are pretty - so is a kaleidoscope - but even if you're stoned a kaleidoscope gets boring pretty damn quick. Apparently some people think it's OK for the laser imagery's development to be "independent" of the musical development. They want to tell a story. (So go write a book.) It didn't work did it? You couldn't get past "suck"...

[DZ]

You couldn't get past "suck"...

This is why the Z-6 will have a "suck" knob, so I can turn that shit down.

This has been a great thread, laserist. One quick story. When I worked in a planetarium I remember having a special event and we were going to run a special laser show for the event. When I asked where they were going to get the show from the director said he would create it himself. Day of the show, he hadn't created anything. So he decides to run the audio of the show, along with playing some other laser show with it's audio muted. I felt aweful thru the whole show and thought it was garbage. I ran the star projector and various effects but there was absolutely no choreography with the laser graphics/abstract. Funny thing was, at the end of the show everyone was cheering and thanked us for the great time... What?!

[swamidog]

i guess i'm confused. you say you're not interested in talking technology, but then you state how modern laser shows suck because they use multiplexing and chopping.

personally, i think a lot of laser shows are bad because the artist interprets the music too literally and reaches for the magic sack of bad clip art. some people love flickery neon laser cartoon. to me they are mood killer.

To explain the lack of success of laser shows today requires a little distance. You have to step back away from your ego. Step back away from everything close to the laser show. Step back from the investment of hours, years, and dollars. Now step a little further back and consider in the abstract that the shows today suck. Mull this alternative possibility around a bit. The shows done today use software that are pretty much variations on two themes and they lean heavily on multiplexing and HEAVY chopping of the image to achieve anything. Heavy chopper is an "effect" in Laserium speak. If you use it everywhere - the whole show looks the same. You never get that Oh Wow! This is so Cool" moment more than once. Now look at how few of the "shows" actually have a - one to one - choreography with the music. At. Any. Time. The music in today's shows goes along at its tempo and the Lasers go along at something similar but there's no linkage. The laser effects are pretty - so is a kaleidoscope - but even if you're stoned a kaleidoscope gets boring pretty damn quick. Apparently some people think it's OK for the laser imagery's development to be "independent" of the musical development. They want to tell a story. (So go write a book.) It didn't work did it? You couldn't get past "suck"...

[Bradfo69]

This is why the Z-6 will...

Oh Lord.... Ka-ching.


I'll start saving money now.

[laserist]

i guess i'm confused (snip)

Thread drift - when someone blames the audience I reserve the right to respond...

[swamidog]

well, yes, of course.

at some point constantly blaming the audience because an excuse not to grow and improve. the difference between "this was not the right venue for my art form" and "i'm right, the audience is wrong" is a slippery slope.

Thread drift - when someone blames the audience I reserve the right to respond...

[sugeek]

I blame lack of 3-phase, water, drains and cotton candy. I remember doing the first shows with shoebox projectors in places we could not do shows before as lack of power and water... People loved the lasers as it as something new. The CRT TVs with magnets stuck to the side playing only static were ignored by most but respected by the laserists as it was a good art project. Performances can get old art lives on like a coherent beam of light.

[laserist]

Joysticks - technology - user interface - and performance supercharger

A well built joystick is a versatile tool for live planetarium laser performances. A quality joystick for laser shows has long life potentiometers and a circular limit. (It's actually pretty easy to build a great joystick from scratch.) If you have a joystick and take some pride in your shows you'll use the joystick a lot, (that's why you want long life pots!) and even though the range of motion of the scanners is a square - there're at least two really good reasons to limit the joystick output to a circular limit. In a planetarium the audience doesn't always have the same perspective as the operator and a tilted square artifact introduces a "why do they do it that way" or "that image/effect isn't level" query that could get in the way of getting to that "trip through your imagination" destination. In the beginning Laserium had one joystick and four scan pairs. The joystick output was processed so only one scan pair was following the joystick. The other three scan pairs were processed to have two scan pairs moving cw while two pairs were moving ccw using a discrete resistor and Op Amp form of fixed z-axis rotation. With Laserium II variable z-axis image rotation was introduced. This is where the circular limit to the joystick really came into its own. With a circular limit and the correct gain the joystick output is a quadrature signal that's ideal for image rotation. That's why the Mark 6 console had two joysticks. One joystick was for offset and one for rotation. (Both functions could be assigned to the same joystick too.) The performance implications were huge. (btw When your hands are both occupied with a joystick is when you decide that a foot pedal for joystick gain might be a good idea. That's when you also realize foot pedals might be handy in a lot of other situations...)

BTW there's no good reason why a timeline based show couldn't interact with joysticks for both of the functions above - either live or while building the timeline...

Also valuable in joystick design is damping. With the turn of a knob the response of the joystick goes from "immediate" to slow motion. I haven't explored the digital possibilities of joysticks during live shows, (yet!) but there're a ton of possibilities there...

A joystick introduces an additional dynamic to a laser performance. It's not just motion -it's also reversal of motion or rotation right on cue that's suddenly at your fingertips, and with a totally intuitive user interface. A joystick allows you to play rotation and/or motion off the image(s) and/or colormod and/or chopper that's "playable". Oh, did I mention it's fun?

There's been a renaissance of sorts lately regarding old school laser techniques. Most old school techniques employ analog electronics. Bare metal analog electronics is something I consider Hard. But the analog electronics used in old school laser projectors is mostly cookbook, and easy to understand. If you want to play in the old school yard you need to take the time to understand Op Amps, and it'll take a whole lot less time than you may think. If you want to do old style Lasers the first requirement is to abandon the phrase, "I can't..."

[laserist]

Joysticks - technology - user interface - and performance supercharger

A well built joystick is a versatile tool for live planetarium laser performances. A quality joystick for laser shows has long life potentiometers and a circular limit. (It's actually pretty easy to build a great joystick from scratch.) If you have a joystick and take some pride in your shows you'll use the joystick a lot, (that's why you want long life pots!) and even though the range of motion of the scanners is a square - there're at least two really good reasons to limit the joystick output to a circular limit. In a planetarium the audience doesn't always have the same perspective as the operator and a tilted square artifact introduces a "why do they do it that way" or "that image/effect isn't level" query that could get in the way of getting to that "trip through your imagination" destination. In the beginning Laserium had one joystick and four scan pairs. The joystick output was processed so only one scan pair was following the joystick. The other three scan pairs were processed to have two scan pairs moving cw while two pairs were moving ccw using a discrete resistor and Op Amp form of fixed z-axis rotation. With Laserium II variable z-axis image rotation was introduced. This is where the circular limit to the joystick really came into its own. With a circular limit and the correct gain the joystick output is a quadrature signal that's ideal for image rotation. That's why the Mark 6 console had two joysticks. One joystick was for offset and one for rotation. (Both functions could be assigned to the same joystick too.) The performance implications were huge. (btw When your hands are both occupied with a joystick is when you decide that a foot pedal for joystick gain might be a good idea. That's when you also realize foot pedals might be handy in a lot of other situations...)

BTW there's no good reason why a timeline based show couldn't interact with joysticks for both of the functions above - either live or while building the timeline...

Also valuable in joystick design is damping. With the turn of a knob the response of the joystick goes from "immediate" to slow motion. I haven't explored the digital possibilities of joysticks during live shows, (yet!) but there're a ton of possibilities there...

A joystick introduces an additional dynamic to a laser performance. It's not just motion -it's also reversal of motion or rotation right on cue that's suddenly at your fingertips, and with a totally intuitive user interface. A joystick allows you to play rotation and/or motion off the image(s) and/or colormod and/or chopper that's "playable". Oh, did I mention it's fun?

There's been a renaissance of sorts lately regarding old school laser techniques. Most old school techniques employ analog electronics. Bare metal analog electronics is something I consider Hard. But the analog electronics used in old school laser projectors is mostly cookbook, and easy to understand. If you want to play in the old school yard you need to take the time to understand Op Amps, and it'll take a whole lot less time than you may think. If you want to do old style Lasers the first requirement is to abandon the phrase, "I can't..."

[swamidog]

BTW there's no good reason why a timeline based show couldn't interact with joysticks for both of the functions above - either live or while building the timeline...

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.