the joy of high powered projectors

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Current Music: the girl is watching tv news and it makes me cry

31 Responses:

  1. internebbish says:

    The whole series is beautiful but ya gotta love the one with pants.

    Does Heathkit makes these or what?

  2. carus_erus says:

    My spidey sense says "Photoshop". Are these things real?

    Even at night there are floodlights on the reactor, I have a hard time seeing how it could be done.

    • endotoxin says:

      Nah, looks pretty legit to me.

    • gargargar says:

      Realize that these are timed exposures, so you don't have to make the effect appear to the naked eye. Notice how the sky is not pitch black, suggesting that they did this just after sundown, and that the camera sat there with the shutter open for a good long while. You don't usually get the glowing horizon plus a few stars unless you've exposed for a few seconds.

      Had you been there in person, you probably would have had to squint to see the faded image as it appeared on the cooling tower, and probably wouldn't have been able to make much out on the high-tension cable tower.

      • lohphat says:

        The pic with the hovering helicopter is pretty clear. Helicopers with autopilots are rare.

        So the exposure isn't that long; even the rising water vapor has enough shape to it instead of being one amorphous smear. If that wern't the case, wouldn't the water droplets in the rising colum provide a dynamic screen and really blur the projected image?

        DLP technology is pretty impressive.

    • ydna says:

      These images have obviously been enhanced. Note the lack of shadow on the far side of the cooling tower with respect to the apparent location of the projector (to the right of the photographer). Note the perfect alignment of the projected images with respect to the photographer (there should be massive parallelism artifacts, e.g. http://www.kkg.ch/lichtkunst/lichtkunst_23.html). Several images show disjoint regions (bottom right corner of http://www.kkg.ch/lichtkunst/lichtkunst_19.html and above the tower where the projected image appears to change in http://www.kkg.ch/lichtkunst/lichtkunst_24.html and several others).

      • ronbar says:

        There wouldn't be any parallax (I think that's what you mean by parallelism) distortion if the camera was set up pretty close to the projector, especially at that distance. Try holding a small flashlight between your eyes and pointing it perpendicular to your face around a dark room, at walls at an angle to you especially. You'll see the shape and apparent size of the beam projection remain the same, even if its brightness fades as it's projected onto more distant surfaces. The effect is more apparent if you close one eye or hold up your thumb and compare its size to the beam projection as you change what you project it onto.

        The cooling tower's relatively flat from that far away, so the projected image's brightness wouldn't change much across its surface.

        As far as the different images between the tower and the condensation, they're just projecting half of one image on top and half of another image on the bottom and lining up the dividing line between the two at the top of the tower.

        • ydna says:

          Yes, parallax. That's what I mean. Thanks.

          You can see what is likely supposed to be beams of light well off to the right in some of the pictures where the projector would be. There are also silhouettes of people near the projector for size/distance reference. There should definitely be shadow showing on the left side of the cooling tower in those pictures.

          • 5tephe says:

            Those 'beams of light off to the right' are the spotlights, or work lights of the power plant itself.

            Easy to do (having never tried it myself)
            1/ big projector
            2/ time delay SLR stills camera + tripod

            The projector is VERY CLOSE to the Camera.

            • ydna says:

              Then why do the spotlights appear to have dark and light bands that appear to correspond to each image being projected? Why don't the spotlights overpower the projected image (the projected images should appear washed out if they're competing with spotlights).

  3. njyoder says:

    What kind of projectors can do that?

  4. node says:

    Is it...Fox News?

  5. anti_tim says:

    Theres a direct influence here of the polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.

    Krzysztof is most famous for projecting political imagery onto large scale monuments beginning in the early 70's. Sadly there arent that many high quality images of his work on the web, but here are a few smaller ones... here , and a wonderful hour long documentary can be viewed in its entirety here>. (warning, real player required and contains art speak).

    I recommend viewing the documentary.

  6. sc00ter says:

    I saw this on the news last week. My question is, why is he doing this to bring up the issue of global warming. He's projecting on a cooling tower that only generates steam. It would make more sense to project this on a coal or oil burning power plant.

    • usufructer says:

      You think it was just a rogue cooling tower? The power lines were there to boil water in the bottom of it to make steam, and waste money?

      It's a power station. The buildings with the turbines don't generally have wide expanses of plain concrete like a cooling tower, so they would make less good subjects.

      • jesus_x says:

        "You think it was just a rogue cooling tower?"

        Yes! It roves the country side giving birds a sauna, then moving out in the middle of the night, stiffing the farmer the rent!

      • fub says:

        Yes, but it's the cooling tower of a nuclear power station. Nuclear power doesn't generate greenhouse gasses because they're not burning carbon-based fuels.

  7. momomoto says:

    "Monuments of Switzerland"?

    When I think of monuments of Switzerland, dolphins are pretty frigging not what I'm thinking of.

    • iota says:

      please tell me that your icon referrs to nugget magazine; if so, best fucking mailbox ever

      • momomoto says:

        Sadly, no. It's a newspaper box for the North Bay Nugget. I was cottaging up there a couple of years ago and made everyone get out of the car and wait while I took the picture.

        Still a great mailbox, though.

        • kehoea says:

          Random vocabulary note; though my queer British vocabulary isn't up to much, I'm pretty sure "cottaging" means "having man-on-man sex in a public toilet." You may want to take that, and the people you're talking to, into account the next time you use it.

  8. 0jla says:

    This is jwz's most emo post ever.

  9. primroseport says:

    This seems right up your alley:

    http://www.multipledigression.com/type/

    A typewriter converted to compyter keyboard