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Most laser light shows depend on a visual phenomenon called persistence of vision. This is the same effect that allows us to see motion pictures and animated cartoons. In order to produce an image, a laser beam is bounced off several fast-moving mirrors. If the mirrors were stopped, you would see only a single dot. By moving the mirrors, the dot is bounced around so quickly that the individual dots merge into an image. You can try the same effect in a dark room with a bright flashlight. Just shine the beam of the flashlight against a wall or ceiling. Start moving the flashlight around in a circle. The single spot will turn into a circle of light if you get it going fast enough.

Of course, it’s a big jump from producing a simple circle of light to the complex images viewed at most laser light shows. Most laser artists rely on a computer to program the images. The output of the computer is connected to an electronic controller with a mirror attached to a swiveling head. The movements and the speed depend on the voltage that the controller receives from the computer. By bouncing the beam off two controllers set at right angles to each other, laser artists can create an infinite number of patterns with a single laser beam.

3-D IMAGES

When you take a regular photograph, you are capturing light rays on a piece of film. A photograph records the intensity of the light bouncing off an object. The picture will look bright where there is a large amount of light and dark in places with little light. With a hologram, not only are you recording the light intensity, but you also get specific information about the reflected light waves. This information includes the direction and distance from which the light has bounced off the various parts of the object. From this wave data, a three-dimensional image can be constructed.

To make a hologram, light from a single laser is split into two beams. The first beam, called the object beam, is directed toward the object. The object beam is spread out over the object, lighting it. Reflected light from the object then strikes a photo-graphic plate. The second beam, called the reference beam, is directed at the same photographic plate. At the plate, the two beams interfere with each other in such a way that the waves they produce either enhance each other (to make a bright spot) or cancel each other out (to make a dark spot). As the beam scans the photographic plate, an interference pattern of the entire object is produced.

After the hologram is produced, a person can then view the image in regular white light. When you look at a hologram, you are actually seeing hundreds of two-dimensional images, each at a slightly different angle. Because you are looking at the plate with two eyes, each eye sees a slightly different image. It’s up to your brain to merge the two images into a three-dimensional image, just as it does when you view objects in the real world.

KEEPING OLD ART LOOKING NEW

One challenge scientists face today is how to preserve ancient pieces of art. Paintings, pottery, and sculptures that are hundreds or thousands of years old are constantly being degraded by the elements. Over time, changes in temperature and humidity, dust, air pollution, and even sunlight can all have negative impacts on various types of art. In most museums, very old and delicate pieces are kept in special climate-controlled cases, and visitors aren’t allowed to take flash photographs of the works.

As you might expect, things are even more difficult for art pieces that are not housed in museums. One particularly troublesome problem has developed with the ancient cave paintings found in Lascaux, France. As previously noted, these drawings are thought to be around 20,000 years old. Until a few decades ago, they were incredibly well preserved because the environment in the cave had not changed for thousands of years. Once the cave was discovered in 1940, the internal environment changed quickly. Body heat from tourists, plus the heat from lamps used to light the pictures, raised the cave’s temperature. In addition, eager tourists who touched the drawings left behind oils and dead skin cells on the wall, and their breath changed the chemistry of the air.

When scientists realized that leaving the cave open to the public was causing problems, they shut them down in 1963. But the damage was already done. In the late 1990s, scientists started seeing black and white spots on the walls. These were due to several varieties of fungi and bacteria that had been brought into the caves by humans, and they were threatening to cover the pictures. Treating the microbes with a biocide halted their spread, but it didn’t kill them all. Recently scientists have discovered that some of the bacteria—which also happen to cause disease in humans—have developed a resistance to the biocide. If the scientists continue using the biocide to protect the art-work, they could be creating resistant bacteria that may some-day infect people. If they don’t use the biocide, the cave will be overrun with microbes, and the artwork could be destroyed.

ART FROM AUTOMOBILES : RECYCLING AT ITS BEST

Imagine this scene: You’re driving along on a rural country road when in the distance you see what appears to be the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex towering over the landscape. As you get closer, you discover that the skeleton is not made of bones or plaster casts but instead of wrenches, chains, gears, and a variety of other pieces of machinery. Next to the metal monster is a rocket ship made from pieces of an old Cadillac and what appears to be a giant Fender Stratocaster guitar—only this one is made from real fenders! No, you haven’t entered an episode of the Twilight Zone. You have stumbled upon Steve Heller’s Fabulous Furniture. As you might have guessed, this is not your typical furniture store. Located in the tiny town of Boiceville, New York, (not far from where the famed 1969 Woodstock music festival took place) it is a cross between an amusement park and an old scrap yard.

Steve Heller is not your typical furniture builder. He’s an artist who specializes in making “functional art” out of what most people would consider junk. He has been running his shop since 1973, by welding metal, cut-ting wood, and assembling pieces of old cars into lamps, tables, entertainment centers, and even beds.

Artist Steve Heller builds art out of old machine parts. His Tyrannosaurus rex includes chains, gears, and wrenches, among other parts

Over the years, many artists have “pushed the envelope,” trying to find new ways to express themselves. Few have done it as successfully as Heller. He uses many types of old machine parts in his works of art, but the cars that Heller chooses most often as sources for materials are vintage, 1950s-era Cadillacs. These cars, which were originally modeled after rockets and planes, feature huge tail fins, bullet-shaped lights, and grills that resemble smiling sharks. Over the years, he has collected dozens of these mechanical marvels, pieces of which can be seen stacked up behind his workshop.

Heller says that creating unusual art forms started when he was growing up in New York City. After he finished his paper route, he would go to a local park and collect oddly shaped tree branches, which he would assemble into “natural” sculptures. His father was an antiques dealer, and Heller would often take some of the broken pieces from antiques and combine them in new ways. This eventually led to his fascination with old auto-mobiles. Rather then see them get crushed, he began rescuing and recycling them into functional works of art. In fact, one of his most prized possessions is the car he drives: a fully restored 1959 Cadillac, complete with side pipes that shoot fire and a variety of his own unique additions.

GLASS HOUSES?

Now, in an attempt to show the strength and versatility of glass, a group of engineers and architects modified the observation deck of the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) in Chicago with four glass observation boxes. The walls, ceiling, and floor of each box are made entirely of glass. Each box sticks out from the side of the building. If people enter a box and look down at the floor, the only thing they see is the street about a quarter of a mile below. The boxes do have a steel framework that secures them to the building, but the glass bears the load. Of course, the glass used in this structure is a bit different from the stuff you find in a typical window or pickle jar. Each structural panel is made of three sheets of half-inch-thick (1.3-cm-thick) glass, bonded together with a polymer film. This unique sandwich approach is designed as a safeguard. If one sheet of glass should crack, the polymer film will isolate it and keep the other sections from breaking.

If the idea of using a substance as fragile as glass as a building material sounds a bit strange, that’s exactly what the designers are hoping you will think. They wanted to demonstrate just how far glass-manufacturing technology has come. If they get their way, these structures are just the start. One goal for the future is to eliminate steel and other support frameworks so that a structure can be built entirely of glass. By using special adhesives to hold the glass together, one engineer in Germany has already built a 28-foot (9-m) dome of nothing but glass. Similarly, designer James O’Callaghan has installed glass staircases in all the new Apple Computer stores.

A TRIO OF MODERN DAY PYRAMIDS

There is no question that the ancient pyramids of Egypt and Central America are architectural marvels. At the time of their construction, they were clearly state-of-the-art structures. Although many people think of pyramids as buildings from the past, the design has not faded away. When officials at the Transamerica Corporation wanted a unique building for their headquarters in San Francisco, they went with a pyramid. Completed in 1972, the Transamerica Pyramid tops out at more than 850 feet (260 m) high, making it the tallest building in the city.

The entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris contains a vast steel and glass pyramid surrounded by three smaller pyramids. Situated next to the original building, this futuristic structure presents the striking contrast between modern and classical architecture

When the main entrance of the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris was in need of a facelift, the architects decided to cover it with an enormous steel and glass pyramid, surrounded by three smaller pyramids. Completed in 1989, the futuristic structure offers an unusual contrast to the classic architecture of the rest of the museum’s buildings.

Finally, in 1991 the city of Memphis, Tennessee, built a 20,000-seat sports arena in the shape of a pyramid on the banks of the Mississippi River. Memphis is also the name of a city in Egypt where several important pyramids are located. Rising to a height of 321 feet (98 m), the Pyramid Arena is the sixth-largest pyramid in the world, about 125 feet (38 m) shorter than Egypt’s Great Pyramid. What these modern pyramids prove is that some designs can clearly stand the test of time.

GREEN BUILDINGS

These days, you hear quite a bit about “green” buildings, but in this case we’re not talking about the color. Green is a relatively new term used to describe technologies and structures that have a low impact on the environment. In the past, when architects designed buildings, their main concerns were with the size, function, and stability of the structures. The amount of energy a building was going to use and how much waste it generated were usually afterthoughts. As a result, many traditional buildings use a tremendous amount of electricity for lighting, heating, and cooling. Heating systems that burn oil or natural gas release large amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air.

In an effort to reduce the “environmental footprint” of new and existing buildings, many architects are taking a closer look at the structures they design to try to reduce the overall impact they have on human health and the natural environment. They work to reduce the energy that a building uses and to decrease the waste and pollution that it generates. Some green buildings use natural daylight as lighting instead of electric lights. Some have increased insulation in their walls and ceilings, and some have specially designed windows to reduce cooling and heating needs.

Saving energy is only the first step in making buildings green. Some architects have taken their buildings to whole new levels of efficiency by redesigning them from the ground up. By orienting the building in the proper direction, they can take advantage of solar heating and cooling. By using recycled materials in construction, they help to reduce waste. Some architects have even turned their buildings into miniature power plants by incorporating solar panels and windmills that generate a large portion of the building’s electrical needs. The bottom line is that the greener a building is, the greener our Earth will be!

ADOBE : AN OLD TECHNOLOGY MAKES A COMEBACK

Every once in a while, a new technological revolution will come along that is not really so new. Take housing, for example. In many parts of the world, people simply cannot afford homes made with lumber, concrete, and brick. This is particularly true in rural desert areas where there are few trees, and lumber and other building supplies must be shipped long distances. To get around this problem, a growing number of architects are turning to adobe, a traditional building material that was first used thousands of years ago. What’s adobe? Basically it’s mud mixed with straw and other fibrous plant material.

Adobe offers many advantages in a desert environment. First, it’s plentiful and inexpensive. All you need to do is dig up some dirt, mix it with water and straw, and shape it into bricks. After baking in the sun for a few days, the adobe bricks can be stacked just like oven-fired bricks. Bricks made from adobe are usually much larger than traditional clay bricks. Because of their size, they offer better insulation, which is particularly important when days are hot and nights are cold. Adobe bricks also can be easily shaped to form domed roofs and arched doorways.

Because it’s cheap, abundant, and offers better insulation, adobe is a good alternative to brick or lumber building materials. It is best to use adobe in desert settings because it can fall apart when wet

There are a few problems with adobe bricks. It is difficult to make the bricks in any color but the color of mud, and they are almost impossible to paint. In addition, when adobe bricks get wet, they tend to fall apart. In a desert, where rain is scarce, this is not generally an issue. In architecture, high technology isn’t always the best technology. Sometimes going back to an older, more traditional way of design is the most appropriate technology. That’s what the science of art and architecture is really all about!