🚀 go-pugleaf

-- For Immediate Release and your edification --

The real thing:
     The Woodstock Theater Arts Boosters who brought the plays M*A*S*H and
It's a Wonderful Life to Woodstock will not be producing a play for an
annual fund raiser this year.  What is their fourth annual fund raiser? 
It's spectacular.  It's a holiday laser and music extravaganza.  It's a
laser light show never before seen in Woodstock.  It's
                           A Wonderful Light.

     There will be two performances December 8 and 9 at 8:00 pm at the
Woodstock High School auditorium.  Adult $5.00.  Students and Seniors
$4.00. 
     For reservations call  (815) 338-4370  [end news release]

Background
     Beginning with an introduction to lasers, by the lasers themselves,
our production moves into an entertainment medium hinted at in 1925.  
Hungarian artist and founder of Chicago's Institute of Design, L�szlo
Moholy-Nagy gave up painting and called for "drawing with light in place of
pigment."  He encouraged the use of light itself as an artistic medium.  He
also noted that although others demanded that art be done by the hand of
the artist, he believed that the manner of executing art, whether manual or
mechanical, was irrelevant.   This seems to describe the modern form of
laser light show.  
     From about 1936 into the 60's, many different things were tried in
kinetic (moving) light art.  Shaped beams, reflective surfaces, irregular
glass, mirrors, walls, ceilings, and screens were used in various
arrangements.  With the invention of the laser in the early 60's the
artists had a new tool to use which had unsurpassed color and intensity.  
     The first laser light show was performed 1969, at Mills College in
Oakland California.  Lowell Cross, artistic director of electronic music,
found that public performances of electronic music left a void and looked
for a way to fill that void with 'something' visual.  After meeting Carson
Jeffries, kinetic artist and Physics professor at U. of C., Berkeley, the
idea of using scanned laser beams was born.  At first, the music itself was
fed into the scanning devices.  The music could now be seen, but being
rather dull at times, prompted the design of special electronic circuitry
for generating interesting graphical designs.  As time went on, almost
every type of music has been used in light shows.
     These early shows were truly performed since the artist, called a
laserist, "played" the electronic circuitry by moving the dials to change
the visual display as the recorded music was played.  Each performance was
different.  This was an adventure, an exploration for new, interesting
visual patterns and more complex electronics to generate them.
     The digital computer opened more possibilities.  The ability to store
images allowed an artist to create a show and perform it for many
audiences.  This makes it a digital parallel to the motion picture, but a
different art form.  The laser light show is the first version of truly
digital entertainment.  
     No good name has been devised for this form of entertainment.  "Laser
Light Show", the most common term, fails to include the music, for all
these shows put laser images to music, or is it  music to laser images ?  
     Although modern entertainers use lasers (it appears that The Who was
the first), they are merely accents and usually beams in the air.  A
similar effect is had with highly focused spotlights.  Though these are
quite impressive displays, a laser light show is a complete entertainment
medium in itself.  It is the show.  Laser graphic images combined with
selected music.  Sights and sounds that seem to be made for each other
     The laser beam makes a spot of light on the screen.   Two small
mirrors move the laser beam around the screen.  The mirrors are attached to
shafts of scanners which, controlled by computer, rotate slightly back and
forth.  One moves the beam up/down, the other left/right.  Moving from
point to point, like a dot-to-dot drawing, the moving beam makes lines of
light on the screen.  It's just like the Fourth of July sparklers we played
with, drawing circles in the air from the bright light.  If you're like
many people, you wished you could move your sparkler fast enough to write
your name in the air.  Images range from animations to complex abstract
designs.  Objects, people, and symbols, drawn by hand and complex "computer
generated" patterns are used.  Now, this may sound as interesting as a
description of how motion pictures work, but we all know it's how you put
it to use that matters. 
     These days, it seems that music is added to everything.  Wherever we
go, music invades our activities.  Every store, every piece of video, every
movie, TV commercial, store promotion, trade show display, has music added.
 The laser light show, however, is a place where music and light are put
together and the result is, well, really cool.  They actually seem to be
made for each other.  There are some pieces of music which seem to have
'something' going on, and the laser light show now allows this 'something'
to be seen.  The laser images are choreographed to just the right music. 
Sometimes the images are designed to be that special 'something' required
by the music.  Sometimes the right piece of music is sought for a special
laser image.
     The show we are putting together will have a wide variety of appeal. 
Some holiday material, of course, but we are selecting a variety of images
and music types so everyone will get the most out of the show.  The span is
from Glenn Miller into the 90's.  Everyone will find something familiar as
well as something new.  
-- 
I know everything except how to be humble...and if there's a contest for
the longest signature that I have yet to hear about.
Noskowicz_Steve@macmail2.cig.mot.com