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The Legend of Sleepy Howell
Presented by Illuminatus Lasers
Drums N' Lasers
Drums N' Lasers is a custom-built electronic/optical laser system designed and built by Illuminatus Lasers' head honcho Mike Gould, assisted by Illuminatus Chief Engineer Wayne Gillis and Chief Machinist Bill Witcher. This apparatus consists of six lasers controlled by six drums, here being played by Ken Kozora. This is a late beta; we are still waiting on parts from China for the full-blown, custom circuit board version. In the final version, the cheap plywood end pieces will be replaced with classy hardwood.
The intent is to create laser beams that pulsate in time to signals received from electronic drums or drum sensors hit by participants at a light art festival.
The lasers are in six different colors: red, blue, green, cyan, magenta, and yellow. These are diode multimode lasers, the secondary colors being created by combining primary colored lasers using dichroic filters.
The controller console is composed of panels crafted to fit EuroRack frames. The upper left panel is the Emergency Stop/Reset system, lower left is master level and twitch.
The console connects to drum outputs via an audio snake, left over from our show at Madison's GLEAM light art festival. Color coded cables then connect to various electronic drums and mics in Ken's tent.
The various controls handle input pre-amplification, beam chopping, low-pass filtering, and several aspects of the beam orientation.
Originally intended for use at Detroit's postponed nuit blanche event, DLECTRICITY, this unit was completed a week before show time at Howell, and this is its first outing. It worked.