post your eye melty abstracts here

[laserist]

I took a different route - I brought the original Laserium shows back in front of a real audience last year. I learned a lot about the state of the market for planetarium laser shows. Mostly I learned that nobody knows how to market any kind of planetarium show today. I also learned that while some here profess an interest in the art of laser shows - a road trip was out of the question. (with a tiny few spectacular exceptions.) I also rolled the significant bits together for a short presentation at the IMERSA conference last spring. Way back when I showed up here the most significant greeting was "shut the hell up! - we don't care about that old shit. There's still plenty of that attitude now. Yes I'm interested in preserving the art, and raising the bar for planetarium laser shows, but since I'm fighting against a shit load inertia it's unkind to complain about my acceleration...

Brian, I think you're missing the point (at least from my perspective). What about technique? No, you can't teach someone to be an artist but you can teach them about the art and they'll either excel or fail based on skill, creativity and determination. You can share the benefit of your experience. Most of your posts are about the art and not the tools, the artist and not the machine. You give a lot of technical information about the hardware but you actually give very little of the "best" tool.... the artist. You talk about the equipment that we have, how much it has advanced. Then you say that very few people are doing anything of note with it (which may be true). If you're interested in preserving the art, hold a webinar of the things you liked to do with a certain piece of music or what you find sets the mood of a show in progress. Obviously the audience is an integral part of how the show progresses but you have to start somewhere. If you're not interested, then oh well but one of my favorite sigs on this forum reads "Information not shared is information lost forever".

[laserist]

You can teach techniques. I'm not sure you can teach techniques without feedback, but if the student puts himself out there he can study and improve and fail and try and question and discover and invent all in an iterative process without the teacher looking over his shoulder. I'm a bit unusual. I watched 1000 laserium shows before I became a Laserist. I wasn't trained I just watched and learned.

Brian, I think you're missing the point (at least from my perspective). What about technique? No, you can't teach someone to be an artist but you can teach them about the art and they'll either excel or fail based on skill, creativity and determination. You can share the benefit of your experience. Most of your posts are about the art and not the tools, the artist and not the machine. You give a lot of technical information about the hardware but you actually give very little of the "best" tool.... the artist. You talk about the equipment that we have, how much it has advanced. Then you say that very few people are doing anything of note with it (which may be true). If you're interested in preserving the art, hold a webinar of the things you liked to do with a certain piece of music or what you find sets the mood of a show in progress. Obviously the audience is an integral part of how the show progresses but you have to start somewhere. If you're not interested, then oh well but one of my favorite sigs on this forum reads "Information not shared is information lost forever".

[Bradfo69]

I brought the original Laserium shows back in front of a real audience last year. I learned a lot about the state of the market for planetarium laser shows.

Mostly I learned that nobody knows how to market any kind of planetarium show today.

So.... who was responsible for said marketing failure? Are you blaming someone else for the marketing of that or... are you saying that you discovered, with the experiment, that it is more difficult to get todays audience into seats using old marketing methods that previously worked?

[laserist]

i'm guessing you don't know many Artists. Just because it's done with the tools of an Artist doesn't make it Art.

Back in 1995 I became the production control guy one morning for our millitary manufacturing division when the previous production control guy decided he really really really needed to do something else right away. We used a MRP system to generate suggested orders for manufacturing and purchasing. We had the source code and a one page description of how the MRP processing was done. I read that description a haf dozen times and never could follow what the hell they were talking about. Eventually I wrote my own MRP code and checked it against the original program's output. There was one conflict an it was due to a fence post error in the original program. I looked at that original program description after about six months, and I thought, "Yes, that would work." Sometimes you have to get to the destination before you understand the route.

Hello,

Even the most talented artist, can do nothing without the tools of their medium.

Give someone a canvas, some paint and a brush, and a painter may emerge. That painter may be great or awful. Either way, it is still art. With some creativity, they may be able to get by with just the paint and a random surface.

Like a father/son or master/apprentice relationship, show the new laserist the way it was done so they can move it forward. Why should every new laserist need to figure out that passing a laser through a "shower door" can look awesome?

Sharing an old drawing, schematic or thought doesn't diminish the value of the information. At the very least, the knowledge gained could be interesting, enlightening or enjoyable. At best, a new "Old way" may emerge.

Even something as simple as a "shower door" was made more interesting by rotating it. It could be made more interesting by rocking it slowly back and forth about it's vertical axis at the same time. How about altering the angle of the the two axis rig I just mentioned to change the refractive index. None of these ideas would emerge if the original "shower door" wasn't known. I didn't figure out how "shower door" lumia worked, I read about it. Maybe the concept would have come to me eventually, but by someone sharing it I was able to expand upon it.

Maybe a wire-wrapped 6502 control board wouldn't be that useful today. I'm sure the entire thing could be run out of a single microcontroller with a bit of analog electronics. I would still love to see schematics or documentation for it. Even just pictures of the boards themselves would be awesome.

Mapping points by hand or with a scratch built "digitizer" may have been the way it was done, but now there is great software to do that. The new software doesn't diminish the old way, it makes it more efficient.

I don't think people are looking to be spoon fed, I think people would just like to understand the concept of the spoon itself.

A good father hopes his children surpass him in knowledge and success. I hurts when you see that point approach and finally overtake you, but it can be joyful to see what emerges in the future from the wisdom you have shared.

Not everyone will be an artist, but at least share the old "paints and brushes".

ED

[laserist]

My goal was the answer to a single question - Did those early Laserium shows have something that people would love like in the 70's or would people just yawn? It was a experiment. I didn't set it up where I had control of the marketing. I assumed that the Science Center would be infinitely more capable than I was at marketing the planetarium. And technically 0.01 is infinitely greater than zero. Baby steps...

So.... who was responsible for said marketing failure? Are you blaming someone else for the marketing of that or... are you saying that you discovered, with the experiment, that it is more difficult to get todays audience into seats using old marketing methods that previously worked?

[Bradfo69]

That's right. I remember now Jon telling me (or perhaps it was you. Or both.) the failure was mainly on the part of the Science Center.

I know it's been discussed in several threads about "todays audience" and what it's going to take to move (excite/interest) them. I've had plans to do theater style planetarium style shows for a couple years and have tried an experiment or two here but haven't had the funds to risk to market it properly.

[laserist]

Honestly I think ultimately it was less a case of failure to succeed as failure to try.

That's right. I remember now Jon telling me (or perhaps it was you. Or both.) the failure was mainly on the part of the Science Center.

I know it's been discussed in several threads about "todays audience" and what it's going to take to move (excite/interest) them. I've had plans to do theater style planetarium style shows for a couple years and have tried an experiment or two here but haven't had the funds to risk to market it properly.

[ImageLight]

Lasers just aren't cool anymore to young people.. They've been over exposed to everything tech and just don't care anymore.. So, what draws a crowd to a lasershow?? The music of the day!!! Yes, we old bastards hate the crap but, if you want a crowd, you have to market the MUSICwith lasers. I've always liked the idea of interaction between people and lasers.. Put a half naked girl in a cage suspended from the ceiling and guard her with laser beams... You'll draw a crowd
Or, do a live band with lasers. If the music is popular, you'll have a crowd.

[Laser Wizardry]

" 15 characters"

[White-Light]

Lasers just aren't cool anymore to young people.. They've been over exposed to everything tech and just don't care anymore.. So, what draws a crowd to a lasershow?? The music of the day!!! Yes, we old bastards hate the crap but, if you want a crowd, you have to market the MUSICwith lasers. I've always liked the idea of interaction between people and lasers.. Put a half naked girl in a cage suspended from the ceiling and guard her with laser beams... You'll draw a crowd
Or, do a live band with lasers. If the music is popular, you'll have a crowd.

With any night, people go primarily for the music. I doubt you could find a clubber on a forum anywhere who'd say they'd go to a venue just because of the lighting irrespective of what's playing. Most go because of the music and the DJ's who play it. The lighting comes in as a secondary consideration.

I think in fairness part of the problem is that in the US you don't have the same wow from lasers because the majority of companies can't audience scan. In Europe, it's the interaction between the crowd and the beams that you talk of that makes the experience something more special. Hence why in the US, a laser caged girl is such a draw!

As for graphics / abstracts, well that is something that's never really interested me that much beyond curiosity, so I couldn't really comment on how easily or otherwise that wears thin. Don't get me wrong, I can be wowed with a great show to an extent. But I certainly wouldn't want to watch a graphic show in a club. I guess that's probably very much the US / European divide once more as Europe is generally more beam heavy.