Audio By Carbonatix
As long as our bad air holds out, the laser display planned for Patriots Square likely will be a great success.
The park has been touted as a symbol of the Valley’s desire to build itself a high-tech industrial future. The flashy laser show will complete architect Ted Alexander’s bizarre brickyard vision for downtown’s most important public space.
Ironically, one of the show’s more spectacular elements–a vertical column of laser light shining straight up into the night sky, a “beam sculpture” visible for miles–will work only as long as Phoenix’s air remains grungy.
As envisioned by Alexander, the light show will have three key elements:
* One, laser beams will project colorful moving images on the large fabric screens tied to the steel grid work above the park’s amphitheatre. “On those screens you’ll see some abstract images and some realistic patterns that are programmed on a computer module on the ground,” says Mike Whiting, an administrator with the Phoenix Parks, Recreation and Library Department who has been overseeing the project. (Alexander refused to be interviewed for this story.)
* Two, the show will be “interactive.” “There will be a user-friendly control module–a joystick, basically is what it is–on the north side of the park, where people can control the show, much as you would a video game,” Whiting says. “You’ll be able to manipulate the image in intensity, the complexity of the image or its rotation or its velocity, how it moves on the screen.”
* Three, a tall cone or cylinder of light will be projected vertically from the grid work into the sky. An illustration distributed by the city while Patriots Square was under construction shows a wide beam of light shining skyward from the heart of Alexander’s steel spider. Alexander has said he sees this vertical column, which some believe will be visible for miles, as a beacon for downtown activity. It is this last element that will be made possible chiefly through air pollution. The science lesson that explains this phenomenon comes later.
The installation of the laser attraction, which will operate from dusk until eleven on most nights, will be made possible partly though private donations. A fund-raising drive brought in about $250,000 for the project, Whiting says, and the parks department is kicking in $125,000–more, if needed. About $90,000 in “rough-in” cost (ducts for wiring, et cetera) was included in the park’s original budget. Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., a large local publishing company, donated three expensive laser bulbs and a cooling system for the project. (These industrial lasers were used in the printing process to make photographic “plates” of newspaper pages and will be adapted for use in the park.) Maintenance of the costly equipment will be paid for with profits from the park’s food stands, private park rental to conventions and other groups and through coins collected at the “joystick” operations center.
In the next few weeks, city officials will pick an architect to supervise the laser project, then various production companies from around the country will submit bids. If all goes as planned, the laser show is expected to debut sometime early next year. Alexander, who designed the controversial park, is odds-on favorite to get the laser contract. “We will be looking to him for a lot of input on what we do,” Whiting says. “He will also very likely apply to be architect for the project, and with his background and interests, we may recommend his selection. We’re interested in his input, but independent of Ted we have done an extended amount of research.”
As yet, few details of that research have been discussed in public. “I am sure that most people don’t have any idea how it’s going to work,” Whiting admits. To get a better picture of what the Patriots Square light show will look like, New Times took a crash course in laser-based entertainment technology. Greatly simplified, this is what we learned:
To create projection effects, a laser beam is shot through a computer-controlled maze of moving mirrors, from where it is aimed onto a screen or solid surface of some kind. The beam strikes the screen as a single dot, and mirrors are then used to move the dot, much like the tip of a pencil would move, to create solid lines. By mechanically vibrating the dot faster than the eye can follow, linear, two-dimensional shapes can be formed on the screen. This is how the fabric-screen effects will work in Patriots Square, where the laser will be projected from a catwalk in the center of the steel grid.
Entertainment-laser specialists say that one of the more spectacular applications of the projection technique is practiced at Stone Mountain State Park near Atlanta, where a nightly sound-and-light extravaganza outdrew the Atlanta Braves baseball team last summer (more than 1.8 million people saw the 45-minute show during its five-month season).
The Stone Mountain effects are projected onto a huge mountainside sculpture of Confederate heroes of the Civil War. Also featured are laser-projected animated commercials for Coca-Cola and other sponsors of the show, which climaxes when the stone horses on which the Rebels ride seem to come alive via laser animation, all to the tune of Elvis Presley singing a medley of The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Dixie. The two-man company that created Stone Mountain’s display plans to bid on the Phoenix laser project, though the company’s scheme for the park apparently differs somewhat from what city officials have in mind. “A beam sculpture after a while is just a beam sculpture. It’s like a piece of art,” says Robert Daffin, vice president of Stone Mountain Lasers, Inc. “We’re a total entertainment show. We’re not into setting up some beams and walking away.” The “beam-sculpture” planned for Phoenix is the one that will work best when the air is worst. Time for laser lesson, part two:
Laser light is invisible until it comes in contact with something solid. The “laser-beam” effect so popular with rock-concert audiences–and the wide vertical beam dreamed of by Alexander as a beacon for downtown activity–occurs only because solid matter (smoke, dust, et cetera) has been introduced into the air. “If you want to do aerial work, you have to have dust, smoke, pollution, rain or snow in the air,” says Lauren Sanders, director of sales and marketing for Lasertainment, a Minnesota-based production company. “The more stuff in the air, the more the beam’s going to shine.” The greenish tubes of light that stream out into a rock arena are possible only because the audience has provided lots of little organic particles off which the light can bounce and become visible. Rock-show special-effects technicians usually play it safe by cranking up a smoke machine a few minutes before switching on the lasers.
The visible beam can be manipulated in many fantastic ways, but the most popular effects are flat planes of light, long cones and cylinders. A nightly sound-and-light show at Epcot Center in Florida reportedly uses the 3-D laser beam technique to great effect. The center’s six lasers, three of them housed in a large sphere in the middle of a manmade lagoon, project animation onto water and shoot multicolored three-dimensional beams through the park. Epcot has had success with visible beams because smoke-producing fireworks are an integral part of the production, says Bettina Buckley, project manager for creative entertainment for the Walt Disney World Company. The pyrotechnic displays are designed to leave a blanket of smoke in the exact paths of the laser light.
Buckley says the theme park is starting to cut down on laser-related segments of the show, partly because of the hit-or-miss nature of beam work. “We’ve added other types of lighting effects,” Buckley says. “We still use lasers, but there’s not as big an emphasis on them. One night it would be great, another night not so great, depending on the atmospheric conditions.”
One major headache for the designers of the Phoenix show will be the vertical beacon’s effect on aviation in the area. The downtown park is located not too far from the flight path of airplanes headed for or leaving Sky Harbor International Airport, and the Federal Aviation Administration has some say-so on the kind of lights that may be shining near (or into) a pilot’s eyes.
Whiting says the FAA is aware of the city’s plans, and that “all indications” from the agency are that the beacon will be approved. “The problem we have is that laser light itself does damage the human retina if it is viewed at less than 1,000 feet,” says Whiting, adding that ground-level observers won’t be looking at the laser light straight-on, which is how eye damage occurs, but from the side. “If a pilot is flying 1,000 feet above the ground in downtown Phoenix, he’s way out of the flight path. We don’t expect that’s going to happen.”
Another concern is the extent to which a joystick operator will be able to control a potentially blinding laser beam. Apparently the vertical column itself will not be controlled by the citizen operator, who will only be able to alter the projected laser images on the fabric screens.
The Center for Devices and Radiological Health regulates laser use. (The C.D.R.H., a division of the Federal Food and Drug Administration, is located in Silver Spring, Maryland.) City officials have consulted with Dale Smith, a consumer-safety officer with the C.D.R.H., regarding the safety of the interactive element of the downtown display. “I don’t see any problem in what they’re doing,” Smith says. “As long as the projections are confined by the hardware, there’s not really any great problem for an audience member.”
Two separate systems will be used to harness the laser light, Whiting says, one a physical barrier near the laser’s projection point onto which errant beams will be deflected, the other an internal barrier generated by the laser-controlling computer’s software. As an additional fail-safe measure, a city-employed operator will be on duty while the laser is active. “An operator should be `in control,’ and should be able to shut the laser down when he feels that’s necessary,” Smith says. “He should have an emergency `off’ switch.”
One problem Phoenix won’t have is unpredictable atmosphere and its effect on the laser display. Thanks to our almost perpetual airborne crud, the vertical beam will glow brightly. The city won’t even have to make like Pink Floyd and pump artificial smoke into the atmosphere. “No,” says Whiting, there are no plans for the park to have a smoke machine. He adds quickly that the air is probably grungy enough in most large cities for laser beams to work without additional particulates.
“On a very clear day, [the vertical beam] probably is not going to have an effect,” he says. “On most days in Phoenix, that’s not going to be a problem.
