United Visual Artists (UVA) has been commissioned by Virgin Media to create an immersive light installation on London’s South Bank to mark the tenth anniversary of broadband in the UK. ‘Speed of Light’ is a series of installations that explore the themes of communication and modernity. Stripped back to its materials, fibre optic is a thin strand of glass, with nothing more than a flickering beam of light. UVA have used this beam as the starting point for their work. The installations dramatize the experience of using fibre-optic communication, re-imagining it as an immersive environment.

The story begins with an input from the audience, which is transferred into a pathway of light, leading through the atmospheric environment of the Bargehouse. The continuous line of light evolves through each installation in turn shifting in intensity and form. Speed of Light uses over 148 lasers across four floors and six rooms of the Bargehouse, a raw and industrial warehouse on the South Bank. The installation will be open to the public from 9 – 19 April 2010.

Creative Review has an article about the installation, with lots of photos by Tom Oldham. Here’s a gallery where lasers describe the outline of a TV set, coffee table and sofa:

Four videos about the project can be accessed at UVA’s Speed of Light website. In case that link does not work, here are the four videos as hosted at YouTube:

Dear ILDA Members,

The New Year is 20% over, and ILDA has embarked on the last year of the decade!  Or the first year of the next decade!

With budgets tightening everywhere, we appreciate your membership more than ever, as we all advance the art of laser display.

As President, I periodically review my notes and collections from previous years ILDA activities, in order to “not forget” the roots and intentions of the organization. At this time, I wish to revive some habits from past years that are appropriate.

One is this newsletter, which I have entitled “Laser Talk”. ILDA had an actual physical publication for awhile with this title, and I thought it was great.  It was just for ILDA members, and was a good place to rehash the conventions, post technical explanations and proposals,  and fostered relaxed communication. Laser Talk was discontinued at the time that the Laserist magazine went to four issues/year, and I really missed it. The ILDA list was started in response to many requests for a more informal means of communication than the Laserist provided, but as I look over the past issues of Laser Talk, I see that we have lost a lot in the translation. This newsletter will attempt to fill the gap if I can get it right!

Another ILDA habit that we have lost is to give new members an opportunity to introduce themselves. I hereby invite all new members to write a brief introduction of themselves, to include in the next release of “Laser Talk”. This can be a biography, company history, etc. It is especially interesting to hear how members encountered lasers for the first time, got the bug, and got their careers going. I am thinking of creating a form on the ILDA website to help the process along.

A brief overview of ILDA activities in 2009:

• We have upgraded the membership renewal process – this year you can go to the new Member Management website and renew yourself, and also change any aspect of your membership listing at any time.
• The ILDA Conference in Amsterdam in early June was a great experience for me, and for all who attended. We are keeping the tradition alive of a gathering of professionals showing and sharing their products shows and accomplishments. It was great to have the LaseOff and Awards in Amsterdam for the second time.
• Many thanks go to ILDA members Peter Broerse of DMX Laser, who was the conference host and spent untold hours setting up his lasers and helping make the meeting a success, and RTI/LaserAnimation Sollinger, who provided the lasers for the 2009 ILDA Awards and LaseOff.
• The Safety Committee has had a good year. Executive Director Patrick Murphy traveled to various international laser safety meetings and proposed new labels for laser pointers, and a new approach to audience scanning safety, and also made suggestions to the USA CDRH to keep new laws laser show friendly.
• ILDA introduced the “ILDA Accredited Professional Lasershow Company” program. Who will be the first to gain this accreditation? Will it make a difference? Let’s try it and see!
• The Ethics Committee had a busy year, and ILDA began a new web page to list active Ethics complaints.  ILDA has actually removed or not renewed three former Members due to serious Ethics problems. I think that this shows that we care about ILDA’s reputation, and we take action when it comes to our attention and when it is clearly warranted.
• We have scheduled the locations of the next three years of ILDA Conferences in order to take advantage of pre-planning. I hope to see you all this year on the Cruise in September, as well as in Moscow in 2011 (hosted by Orion-Art Multimeda), at the conference that I will be hosting in San Antonio in 2012, and at the 2013 conference hosted by LOBO in Germany.

ILDA AWARDS

The Awards Committee wrapped up discussions to create new categories for entries in 2010, making it easier to decide which category to enter into. Big news is the creation of a “live” category with member judging;  final judging will take place at the LaseOff at the Sept. Conference. The deadline has been set for March 31, giving all entrants ample time to create their entries.  Go to the ILDA Awards page, download your forms, create your video entries, and send them in now! Less than a week until the mailing deadline -

ILDA Conference 2010 – it’s a Cruise!

After experiencing a great response to the cruise convention in 2008, the Board has voted to hold ILDA 2010 on a cruise ship once more. Join your professional laser show colleagues on the Carnival Destiny leaving Miami Sept. 6 – 11, 2010. The page is up at the ILDA web site now, and we need people to sign up ASAP to cover the deposit. Let’s go, people!

See you when our laser beams cross in the future!

- Tim Walsh
ILDA President

PS: Many thanks to Greg Makhov of LSDI, ILDA’s Safety Chair, for his work in 2009. Greg co-wrote the paper with Patrick about audience scanning, which was presented at two conferences. He also attended the International Laser Safety Conference held last year in Reno, to help represent the interests of laser shows and of ILDA. Throughout the year, when ILDA needed laser safety help, Greg has always been there to give his experience and advice. Finally, congratulations to Greg for receiving the 2009 ILDA Career Achievement Award. For his many contributions, especially in the area of safety, the 2009 CAA was richly deserved.

And others might point to the first recorded use of the word “laser”, in lab notes made by Gordon Gould on November 13 1957. Since his notebook predated Townes and Schawlow’s patent application, Gould and his lawyers fought for nearly three decades to overturn the March 22 1960 patent. He finally won his legal battle in 1987 with the issuance of U.S. patent 4,704,583. Ironically, since laser technology had progressed so much since 1960, Gould’s patent royalties were much more valuable due to the 30-year delay than if he had originally filed in 1957.

So when is the laser’s 50th birthday? There is a big difference between inventing something on paper — even at the Patent Office — and having it actually work. The first working laser was demonstrated by Theodore Maiman on May 16 1960. Since that is the first time visible laser light was shown in public, May 16 1960 is probably the best date to pick as the laser’s “birthday”.

The key drawing from the first laser patent approved

GM's laser-projected windshield display shows the road edge in low-visibility conditions. Note the curving line ends, showing where the beam begins and ends drawing the line segment.

According to information at Superimaging’s website, their “TransPlay” laser projection system uses standard galvanometer scanners (3o,000 pts/sec speed on the ILDA test pattern) with an ILDA interface so it is “compatible with laser show controllers from Pangolin, Riya, and many more.” A photo of the projector shows it to be a box about 3″ x 4″ x 1.5″, with an attached lens about 2″ long. The other key part of the GM system is MediaGlass optically clear film. It has phosphors suspended in it which glow under UV light. GM is using the two-color MediaGlass film which glows blue under 405 nm light, and red under 365-375 nm light.

The augmented reality portion of GM’s system uses sensors, both visible and infrared, to detect objects outside the car, and cameras inside the car to detect where the driver is looking. A computer then extracts important information such as road edges, cars in the driver’s blind spot, animals at the side of the road, road signs and important buildings or locations along the way.

The demonstration system would not be ready for commercial use before at least 2016.

The system has received widespread press; two sources for more information are Popular Science and Physorg.com.

“What is that irritating dot?” Zoraxian Emperor Fi’ar Shal Shoka communicated in a telepathic message…. At press time, irritated Zoraxian military personnel were hard at work building a giant megalaser designed to incinerate the source planet of the irritation.

I had the pleasure of working with Chris in 2001, at the Detroit Auto Show where the laser show was controlled from a hidden platform directly beneath three 1960′s-era Ford GT racing cars being throttled at full blast — the loudest thing I’ve ever experienced. At the 2008 ILDA Conference on the Carnival Imagination, Chris showed ILDA Members deep-blue Necsel diode lasers, which his then-company Novalux was working on for laser video projectors.

Chris Stuart shows a 6W deep-blue laser to ILDA Conference attendees

The Engadget article goes into great depth about Chris’s current project, a 103″ laser-projected 3D HDTV from his current company HDI where he is Director of Technology. The article describes watching 3D content and playing videogames on a 97″ prototype that has the screen in one room and the laser optics in another. (The final 103″ version will use “a custom curved optics solution that will bend and direct laser light within a 10-inch deep cabinet.”)

Chris is in the first Flash video on the site; he is on the right in the light polo shirt. In the video Chris takes Engadget’s Darren Murph through a 3D demo that HDI got “from a company up in Seattle” — maybe Lightspeed Design, also a major light show producer and ILDA contributor in the 1990s. Murph was very impressed. He wrote that “without a doubt, HDI’s 3D HDTV was the best in-home 3D product that we’ve had the pleasure of viewing … HDI has the immersive factor nailed…. it’s pretty safe to say that we’re fans of this whole laser thing.”

The article is interesting both from a laser standpoint and in describing how a startup tries to break into the big time. HDI talked with major TV companies such as Sony and Toshiba about licensing their 3D technology, but eventually decided to produce the set themselves. The 103″ version will cost between $10,000 and $15,000 which sounds expensive. However, non-3D 103″ sets out there from Panasonic and Bang & Olufsen currently sell for $40,000 to $95,000 which makes HDI’s 3D version a bargain.

Check out the article for many more fascinating details. And congratulations to Chris, one of the nicest people in the laser show and display industry!

Recently, gear site Ars Technica ran into the designer of Terminator’s laser gunsight, a man named Ed Reynolds who is with SureFire, a company specializing in tactical flashlights. He related how, in 1978, he had put a laser on a .357 Magnum for SureFire: it was “very expensive, and we highly modified the weapon”. For the 1984 movie, he made two props. One used a working laser on top of an AMT Longslide handgun. There was a hidden cable that ran up Schwarzenegger’s coat sleeve, to a power supply and a switch hidden in his non-gun hand. Arnold himself had to turn the laser beam on and off.

The second gun was a non-working prop without the wire.

Although the gun became an icon (it was used in the movie’s poster), Reynolds only got a few promo items for his trouble. Oh, and a credit at the very end of the movie. Fortunately, he has a good attitude about the experience, noting “I got to benefit because I could say, ‘Hey, I did that!’”

For laserists of a certain age, it is a reminder of the day when lasers were a lot more exotic and difficult to use, and when seeing a real laser beam on-screen was rare.

New York Times writer Ben Ratiff noted in the March 3 2010 article that she played the laser harp on “her song ‘Earthquake’ by moving her hand among the streams of light; each time she blocked one, it triggered a synthesizer pitch, and she could alter its tone by lowering or raising her hand on each beam.’Earthquake’ isn’t much of a song, but that was a beautiful display. It made you feel light. ‘I’m basically obsessed with lasers,’ she admitted, chattily, when the song was done.

There are more pictures at a website called Brooklyn Vegan; scroll down to the bottom for most of the laser pics.

Tech blog Gizmodo was not impressed: “I just don’t get it. Let’s just stick with the normal instruments, shall we?”

Lasers featured prominently in one of the most-watched events of the year, Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. On February 7, 106.5 million U.S. television viewers saw The Who perform at halftime, backed by over 400 watts of laser beams from 16 sources on the field and in the stage. The lasers were produced by Laser Design Productions of Markham, Ontario and Las Vegas, who had only 8 minutes to set up their equipment.

Fourteen Pangolin laser control cards were networked under the main stage. Eight full-color lasers were positioned on the field. Eight additional lasers including four 50-watt YAGs and four full-color air-cooled lasers were located upstage of the New Orleans Saints’ bench.

Click for larger image

The show was programmed by Doug Adams and Jason McEachern at LDP’s Markham, Ontario office using Light Converse previsualization software. The initial laser effects were designed as a “classic green laser look” reminiscent of The Who’s pioneering 1970′s laser shows. Later, full color lasers transitioned into purple, red, white, blue and amber/brown, choreographed with the standard stage lighting.

For much more detailed information, download Laser Design Productions’ Super Bowl press release. (Photo credit: Touchdown Entertainment Inc./Brad Duns.)