Psychedelic Stage Lights: Where do I find them?

[HawldieMPB]

Sorry to rez this thread but I was wondering if anyone has tried this since? Any good experiences (or pictures!) How would venues react to you bringing a laptop and asking to hook it to their projector let alone a overhead projector and a box of dyes? is this pretty much reserved for house shows and the like?

 

[ggunn]

Sorry to rez this thread but I was wondering if anyone has tried this since? Any good experiences (or pictures!) How would venues react to you bringing a laptop and asking to hook it to their projector let alone a overhead projector and a box of dyes? is this pretty much reserved for house shows and the like?

I used to work an overhead projector with large watch glasses, mineral oil, and food coloring at a disco in the early 70's. It worked great with a couple of caveats. There is a lot of light leakage from that rig, so you wouldn't want to put it between the audience and the band. Also, the farther from the projection surface you put the projector the less bright the image is, so when you set the projector far enough back to cover the stage, too much regular stage lighting will wash it out; you will need to play on a somewhat dark stage.

The glassware best used for this effect is watch glasses, not petri dishes. Watch glasses are round sections of spheres with large radius of curvature (no part of them is flat). To make the effect work you need two of them, one a little smaller with lower radius than the other (the largest one I used was about 15 inches in diameter with a ROC of several feet) so that when you put the smaller one on top (inside) the other, they only touch at one point. Pour mineral oil and food coloring into the larger glass and put the smaller one inside it and move the smaller one around for the effect. For added effect you can use three glasses with different colored food coloring in the two spaces between them. Inagaddadavida, man!

BTW, cleanup is a mess. Wear old clothes.