Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Light a Cigar

LIGHT A CIGAR

Love your projector?

Its an antique you say. A work of art. Yes.

Do this then friend. Light a cigar.

You know. I know you don't smoke. Buy one at Mapco. As you pay your 3.50 a gallon. Fire up your legacy projector. and light up. approach it. blow smoke at it. And you wil see streamers of light poking out from it. and you will understand its not a star projector. its a purveyor of light. subjectively. you feed it the light. and it streams it out as it wishes.

Natures grandest spectacle. Light a cigar and blow it at your star machine. Then you will understand it doesnt belong to you. God built it so he .. He. She.. could show you what He. She built we dont build them. They just sort of come by themselveswe are privileged to know where the off/on switch is . Light up a cigar. Approach the instrument. the Machine. Blow smoke.

And see the star streams.

Then perhaps you'll know why you came this way.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Orchestral Manuevers in the Dark

Makers of their own planetariums have a unique opportunity. We paint in light yes. Tiny lights, bright lights.. recreating natures splendor. But we have another palette from which to create - the palette of sound. And a unique ability perhaps unprecedented anywhere short of a cavern ..

We can banish all the light. And paint in the dark.

With sound.

We have the ability to plunge ourselves into TOTAL dark, so that ONLY the sound is there.. Nobody else has that.. NOBODY! Even the cave guides dont have sound other than perhaps drip drip drip - people dont experience total dark anymore - (well I did in my youth camping, my father would put us in our tent so tightly you couldnt see anything) but...

What fun it will be concocting new sounds - digitally altering them . More good junk to find and bring home - create our own musical instruments .. noise instruments .. out of unusual objects .. wires, boxes, metal things ... Sounds can be generated with anything.. and in the dark.. sound like everything....

Total dark preceeding the Big bang . how magnified that can be with sounds we can create. Music of course, our own, computer generated, or sampled. But theres so much more .. we can run a laboratory of sounds - I dont have a digital recorder however so I'm still trapped in analogs-ville in that respect. But painting in sound and sound alone with nothing visual to distract it .. thats an exciting concept really and unique to us under the dome.

Try some of your own orchestral manuevers in the dark!