May 2014

Starfield Galaxy at Lucidity 2014 from JOn Smith on Vimeo.

The theme for the 2014 Lucidity Festival was “Universe”. As the head of ambient lighting for the festival, I wanted to make an abstract of a galaxy for part of the main roadway. It needed to be at least 200 feet long and give the sense of millions of stars. I looked over a variety of options then Jonah Haas, one of the founders of the Festival, hooked me up with me up with Bruce Beeley of Lasersandlights.com. I knew about the type of lasers he had and got very excited. Bruce agreed to bring 7 Sprights and 5 LS20Gs. The former make static starfields, the latter create slowly moving starfields. I knew that if I set them up just right the moving lasers would make everything feel like it was in motion. In order to place the lasers in the best locations, I had my crew strap five 30′-40′ lengths of Bamboo (thank you Bamboo DNA) into the surrounding trees so their ends poked out over the middle of the road. We strapped the lasers to these and literally flooded the entire length of road with points of green light.

I knew that when a vehicle went through it the ensuing dust would make it three dimensional. When Bruce told me he’d also brought up a powerful hazer that would create this effect..well, I was overjoyed. On Saturday and Sunday nights we set it up. The results were…and I don’t use the word lightly…awesome! I got my galaxy and then some.