Lighting Up Art

[jc]

Boy it seems like each time we come up w/ a solution there's another problem. That's ok. were starting the planning early and getting lots of good brainstorming that helps. Keep it coming.

[jc]

May instead of trying to find a paint that will glow under a blk light and is bullit proof we could use some kind of marine varnish or pollyerithane finish. I think that stuff will glow under a blk light?

[jc]

Or maybe just paint it white w/ a good glossy paint. That will glow and help keep the metal from getting too hot. The structure is constructed of metal and will be interactive, ie:people will be touching and moving it.

[robotland]

For the record- When I suggested UV flouro tubes I wasn't trying to suggest they be mounted in a ten-dollar shoplight fixture or something....They need to be in golfclub shipping tubes or behind shatterproof vinyl so as not to create Heinous Moopage.

Another approach would be to use more conventional 12V yard-spots and REFLECTIVE TAPE. At least, adding reflective tape ANYWAY would provide reflected light from approaching bike or mutant vehicle headlights. If the structure's metal will take a polish, buff that sucker up to make reflective surfaces day AND night.

[Ranger Genius]

Not all white paints will glow under UV light. Test them first. You can just get that stuff utilities companies use to mark buried lines and stuff. It's spray-on and adheres to almost any surface pretty well, and will stay there for a long time. Just test everything with UV light before you use it, as not everything that you expect to flouresce will.

[robotland]

And check Pep Boys and the like for blacklight neon or LED fixtures- Many are armored to withstand automotive-scale abuse although you STILL might want to reinforce wiring points and covers with GOOP adhesive or shipping tape. You can sew or tape together custom light-fixture covers with clear vinyl, available by the yard from HyperGigaGlobalMart.

[Zane5100]

UV Blacklight LEDs or clusters of same

I've had very mixed to bad results with these. I used them for my shade structure when I was doing fluorescent body painting, and they proved to be an expensive/pain in the ass/in need of constant maintenace/didn't provide the visual effect that I needed endevour. 4' fluorescent tubes did most of the work and if I had to do it again, I'd get more fluorescent tubes and spend less time and money on it.

Unless you are lighting something close up, I cannot recommend using LEDs--and if you're not careful on the wavelength of LEDs, you can end up fucking up your eyes. Most of the UV LEDs out there are for industrial UV curing and are not intended for scenic decoration.

When looking for paints, stick to the ones that say UV reactive or fluorescent. Rosco makes a decent scenic paint, but all fluorescent paints will be more expensive than regular pigments. Glossy paints won't cut it--they have to have a reactive UV component to the pigment for it to "pop" under sunlight or black light.

Using a varnish over a UV reactive paint could filter out the UV and defeat your purpose. Definately make a test piece before commiting to that line of construction.

As to sticking to metal, the Rosco paints are regular latex base and have descent durability, but you might want to use a primer for metal. Don't try to use on vinyl--it'll only flake off and make more MOOP.

[robotland]

I found that UV LEDs are PERFECT for spookhouse applications- My pal Sparks gifted me a handful of cleverly-altered blackyardlights, which I added "barndoors" to to narrow the beams. In a completely dark environment, a single diode will light up a flouro-painted Spooky Head like gangbusters from two or three feet away. I've never had more than a handful at a time to play with, but it seems like a cluster of clusters of them WOULD work, if you were workaholic enough to solder that many widgets together and figger all the resistors and power issues and junk.

How about glowtape? By that, I mean the flat EL stuff. Yeah, expensive. But some patches of that stuff'd work. I have a couple of "electronic glowsticks" that use the stuff, and it's fairly bright. There was a lotus sculpture the other year that was hung with several dozen redblinkyLED keychain gadgets, no one of which was particularly bright, but the cumulative effect combined with the "motion" of the blinking made for a relatively visible structure. Most of the cheapo bike blinkies will run for a week or more, so you wouldn't have to run around pushing all those little "on" buttons.

Frankly, I believe that the ultimate solution will be to emply EVERY type of active and passive illumination/reflection technology at your disposal. Imagine it! Pretty.

[Zane5100]

a single diode will light up a flouro-painted Spooky Head like gangbusters from two or three feet away

Sure... it's when you get 20' away that they don't do dick.

it seems like a cluster of clusters of them WOULD work

Yeah, that's what I used to believe once upon a time...

Experience (IOW: learning the hard way) proved me wrong, in that you would need a LOT of them in a cluster (9 ain't going to cut it--that was the size of my clusters, and I had 6 of them) to make a difference. Two 4' tubes more than out shone the LEDs to the point that I didn't notice when they were or were not on.

Now that I've built them, deployed them, and then spent a week fucking with them, I firmly believe that they are not worth it--that is if you're wanting mad UV coverage to make a structure full of fluorescent paint look halfway decent.

By the time you spend on the money on enough of the little fuckers for it to be worth it (and I hope you're good at soldering), I think that from a cost effective POV, it'd be better to get a real black light instrument.

[robotland]

[quote="Zane5100Sure... it's when you get 20' away that they don't do dick.
Yeah, maybe that's why I said, "two or three feet".

it seems like a cluster of clusters of them WOULD work

Two 4' tubes more than out shone the LEDs to the point that I didn't notice when they were or were not on.

That's why I suggested them before diodes.

Now that I've built them, deployed them, and then spent a week fucking with them, I firmly believe that they are not worth it--that is if you're wanting mad UV coverage to make a structure full of fluorescent paint look halfway decent.
I respect your beliefs, but YMMV.

By the time you spend on the money on enough of the little fuckers for it to be worth it (and I hope you're good at soldering), I think that from a cost effective POV, it'd be better to get a real black light instrument.[/quote]
In that, we are agreed. Ranger Genius was right. Just burn the fucker.

[robotland]

Gee, that reply's not hard to follow, is it? Let me try again:


"I agree, with reservations."

[Zane5100]

robotland,

I wasn't trying to hack on ya--sorry if it felt like that. I have been known blather on about things. Guess I've said my piece on the matter--if jc wants more detail, we can supply that ad nauseam later after they figure out what it is they want to do...

[Ranger Genius]

How about it, JC? want to give us some details so you can really pick our brains?

[shitmouse]

"BTW, UV LEDs are not really that good for wide coverage or having a long throw."

i'm designing /building a transparent floor for my wife's playa project. it will be a large lotus flower made of broken mirrors with the transparent flooring as a place for one to sit and meditate.

my original idea was to have about 70 UV l.e.d.s spread around the floor under the plexiglass, and have the l.e.d.s light spill over onto the mirrored lotus -(even if we need to aim them a bit toward the lotus). after thinking about the nature of l.e.d.s and how they work, this might not work well at all.

do the large UV l.e.d.s give off a good amount of light? i have a single tiny l.e.d. on my rack system at home and it actually lights the entire room when the lights are off. i also own several l.e.d. lights and know they can be bright, but i have a feeling that UV l.e.d.s are different that way. more for points of light rather than fall-off right?

what are your thoughts on this? i thought about incorporating them into the actual lotus mosaic, -(for playa bug light power), but then concerns for UV being harmfull to eyes comes into play. at least in the floor one wouldn't be positioned to look directly at them, they'd just be sitting on them.

thinking maybe a black light spot might be better.
any thoughts on the UV l.e.d. part of this idea?
-b

[Ranger Genius]

If you get more than, say, 5 feet away, the light falloff from UV LED's is significant enough to make the effect of even quite a few of them virually undetectable in the presence of any other light sources, and I mean ANY. You'd probably find you'll have better luck with two or three black flouro tubes, and having them under the floor would protect them from trampling/collisions, so it wouldn't mattter that they're fragile. I got a shoplight fixture with a 3 ft flouro black light for five bucks once at all-in-one Mart ("The store big enough to swallow your town!") a couple years ago, but you might not be able to reproduce that price. Shouldn't be too much more though. For coverage, output and price balance, you probably can't do any better. In general it's cheaper if you buy the flouro tube and the fixture separately. As always, YMMV.

[robotland]

Agreed. My success with the LED-spotlight-spookhouse application was very specific, and in a completely light-controlled environment. Most diodes are geared towards forward applications, having around a 20% width of illumination. Within their range they kick ass, but outside of it and at distance the results drop off sharply.
I'm just beginning to fool around with the projector-lens assemblies from a rear-project TV that got gifted to me- There might be solutions involving "projected UV light", and I'll share my findings as they occur.
Some of the automotive UV's would work for the lotus floor, which sounds like a beautiful idea, BTW.
One irritating phenomena that I encounter with UV is the flourescing of my contact lenses, which can be very disorienting. One thing to bear in mind about visually shielding the UV source.
For steady but low lighting I've had VERY satisfactory results with RED LEDs, specifically the replacement brakelight clusters available for six-or-eight bucks. Work great in fiber optics, too.

[jc]

I've always liked the look of EL'Wire. What about using el wire under the meditation floor? I'd like to use el wire for my project except the sculpture is so large the cost would be prohibative.

"BTW, UV LEDs are not really that good for wide coverage or having a long throw."
my original idea was to have about 70 UV l.e.d.s spread around the floor under the plexiglass, and have the l.e.d.s light spill over onto the mirrored lotus -(even if we need to aim them a bit toward the lotus). after thinking about the nature of l.e.d.s and how they work, this might not work well at all.
do the large UV l.e.d.s give off a good amount of light? i have a single tiny l.e.d. on my rack system at home and it actually lights the entire room when the lights are off. i also own several l.e.d. lights and know they can be bright, but i have a feeling that UV l.e.d.s are different that way. more for points of light rather than fall-off right?
what are your thoughts on this?
-b

[jc]

It's no big secret. I'm hesitant to say too much because I don't want to look like a flake if I don't come through w/ this project for some reason. It'll be another couple of months before I will know if I can do this and on what scale. Then I'll need to go through the whole process w/ BM. Regardless here's the project... It's an interactive kinteic sculputre. A maze where one or two people will manipulate a 10" to 18" ball using a couple of wheels. It will be 10' to 20' in diameter (depending on what scale I decide on). Basic yet I think it will be fun, at least the 6" model I built is.

How about it, JC? want to give us some details so you can really pick our brains?

[Ranger Genius]

sounds pretty cool. A guy named Wizard had something a little similar (if I understand your description) in 2003: only it was a giant globe on the end of a (distinctly Archimedian) lever, with a spot light at the end of the lever to represent the sun. Even cooler was the fact that you could climb INSIDE the globe, and there was a separate sphere there divided fromt he exterior shell by a layer of glass bearings, so you could walk on it and make that interior sphere spin inside the larger one, while other people moved the globe around with the lever. Plus, the turning of the lever and globe made it so that from different places on the playa, you would have different phases of the earth: 1st quarter, waxing gibbous, full, et cetera. It was awesome. There's a lot of experience here on the board and we can point you to a lot of resources to make it more likely that you'll be able to complete your project. Don't hesitate to ask us, and thanks for not being offended at being corrected re: etiquette.

[robotland]

As a matter of fact, Wizard's project can be enjoyed in the "Beyond Black Rock" DVD, as can many other wonders!
Trimming the maze with EL would really be striking, but the cost DOES add up. There's no law against using several types of illumination, and sometimes the effect of that is greater. I made a helmet that I'm quite pleased with, that features a combo fiber-optic/EL wire crest. The spookhouse project was partially an excuse to play with lights, and I used just about every kind of lightup you can name from joy of doing so.

[jc]

I must have missed Wizards sphere in 03'. It sounds very cool and fun.

[robotland]

Don't feel bad- I missed it, too....It's one of BRC's most endearingly surreal qualities that fairly enormous, interesting things can be close enough to trip over yet still go unseen.