Pink Floyd Light Show Creates Techno Visuals For Retro Audios
There is only one place where universal themes unite people from all over the world and eat them in fifty minutes: the light show "Laser Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon".
The Boston Museum of Science presents a space animation and laser effects show every Friday and Saturday. Viewers can take a tour of the entire Dark Side of the Moon album and see the main themes that appear in each song.
It takes place at the Charles Hayden Planetarium, a $9 million, 57-foot dome that has hosted bands as diverse as Radiohead, Beyoncé and Fleetwood Mac. However, "Laser Floyd" is the only music-related show that uses lasers in its animation, the rest being strictly astronomical images.
At the beginning of the song "Time" during the performance, neon laser clock images fade into a dark red background. As the bell rang from the belfry, the alarm clock rang suddenly, clock hands, screws and gears flying over the crowd. The performance lasted two and a half minutes and the images of the pyramids accompanied by drums captivated the audience.
A synth solo at the end of "Brain Damage" spawned several mushroom-like figures on the screen. The song is dedicated to someone who hears a voice in their head telling them what to do. All these mental images helped the audience enter the mind of the hero of the song.
Another highlight of the show was several eye-opening and closing moments during "The Color You Want." As a full song, the space theme interlude is perfect for the show's aesthetic. It was a digestible moment that gave the audience a new perspective.
As "Us and Them" plays, a spinning red vinyl record blinks to the slow tempo of the song, matching the swirling guitar riff.
The last song of the show and the album "Eclipse" included a part of the session "Us en Hulle". The show's big finale, "Eclipse," ended with rapidly spinning lasers as the song's climax played.
Dale Edwards, producer of the Musical Art Show at the Charles Haden Planetarium, hosted the Pink Floyd Laser Show for ten years.
"Everything you see in Astronomy was my live flight edited from multiple videos," Edwards said. "It shows the same software that was used in astronomy... I also used those scenes."
The crowd at Friday night's show was made up of people of all ages. Brenton Baab, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, attended the Pink Floyd Laser show last weekend.
"Being able to adapt from laser storytelling to abstract things has really grown," Baab said.
CAS sophomore Michael Villani said "Money" stood out to him, as did the Egyptian portion of the show. Egyptian themes in the song "Time", including the pyramids.
"(The hieroglyphs) may refer to the ankh, the symbol of life in Egyptian mythology," Villani said. "I don't know if anyone noticed... at least for me there were a lot of signs of life and death."
Susan Katz, a graduate student at Northeastern University, said the program was great and "very fast."
"I felt like I was on a roller coaster," Katz said. - I was walking.
The highlight of the event was the laser engraving of the famous album cover on the background of the moon.
