Laser

Robin Fox’s laser show describes, in three-dimensional visual space, the geometry of sound. Enveloping the audience in synchronous sound and light information, the experience resembles a synaesthetic experience where what you hear is also what you see. The same electricity generated to move the speaker cones is sent simultaneously to high-speed motors that deflect the laser light on an x/y axis converting sonic vibration into light movement.

The laser-based performance is an extension of previous work undertaken using Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes to create audio-visual equivalence, documented on the DVD ‘Backscatter’. Documentation of the laser performance is incredibly difficult, it really has to be experienced and filmed versions have proven to be inadequate for promotional purposes. Recent performances have taken place across Australia, Japan and Europe in 2007.

Press Reports For Laser Show

Most spectacularly, Robin Fox successfully visualized sound with his superb laser show. Think of an oscilloscope, think of the scene in the intensive care unit when the green fluro trace flattens out to a straight line. Now think of that line like a bolt from the proscenium wall across the audience multiplying as it describes an astonishing variety of planes, thanks to the dry ice machine and a couple of mirrors. Fox’s use of an audio controlled laser projector to demonstrate the geometry of sound was as elegant as anything you might experience in a concert hall or gallery.

Penny Webb, The Age Newspaper 26/06/2007

With the portentous hiss of a smoke machine, all venue lights are dimmed and Robin Fox begins beaming his laser show. A piercing green ray shoots out from the stage toward the mixing desk and back wall. The audience sit in huddled knots, crowding into the centre of its field, facing the stage. The back wall displays the large ‘resulting’ patterns of the beam, but of as much interest here are the points in-between – the way the beam splits and seems to fold smoke back into itself, the way the audience becomes enmeshed in its stippled dance, as much participating as observing. All of which is not to give short shrift to Fox’s brilliant electronic compositions – a laptop-driven set of plunging bass and dark, fractured tones. The laser show and sound shapeshifted in tandem, cohering in a flawless set.

Ben Gook, Mess and Noise Magazine
http://www.messandnoise.com/reviews/542098

Lap top supremo Robin Fox…..is exploring the ever more precise synchronisation of sound and image by linking his laptop bass textures to a single-point laser, projected through smoke as a series of violently cut-off changes in shape and form. Fox’s live performance literally shook the building and riddled it with green, pinprick shafts.

Jonathan Marshall, Real time Magazine
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/79/8612

I caught a solo “laser” set of robin’s earlier this year in Melbourne, and i have to say that it was one of the highlights of my entire oz/nz trip - really incredible mix of full-blown-out rectified-wave digital histrionics and a ridiculous psychedelic light show…

Keith Fullerton Whitman
http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/robin+fox.html

ART TERRORIST in the house! His laser light show was pretty amazing. The fire engines, fire alarm, evacuation and smoke was perhaps a good build up for this show too! Robin filled the room with a smoke machine for a better effect and I guess due to the sensitive nature of the Frontroom’s newly refurbished status – set the fire alarm off!

So as I said we all had our own premier light and sound show outside on the street. Was an interesting little interlude actually – well at least it works folks!

Regardless of this excitement, Robin Fox is obviously a very talented guy. I felt like I was raving somewhere, but the music was much more abstract – matching the laser beams as they danced rhythmically around the theatre. Was definitely something not to have missed - was an ‘experience’ to just be there.

Kate Kennedy, Scoop
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0611/S00130.htm

Robin Fox’s Rave-A-Licious laser performance projects are rarer in the 21st century than the nineties warehouses would’ve had us believe. Undoubtedly all roads in this terrain eventually lead to 1 x Robin Fox, a Melbourne based electronica / noise / experimental music performer who has gradually shifted his soundmaking to become servants of a giant green laser. In practice this means he tweaks specific frequencies and patterns onstage with a laptop, which in turn cause a very responsive laser to carve out surprisingly dimensional shapes in a cloud of smoke and inevitably leaves audience jaws on the ground for the duration of his show. Very much something that needs to be experienced more than described, but is also well documented online.

Skynoise
http://www.skynoise.net/2006/12/04/pop-optics/

From a review of the Chambers installation/performance, Brisbane 2007. Sound was in headphones.

The silent flickering green lasers of classic science fiction. Without sound the eyes are free to absorb even more movement and scope within the impossibly complex and inventive shower of light beams transforming the space. Fox demonstrates the control he has over this stimulating process, creating morphing pulsating concentric circles of light which wrap around the bodies of those who enter, enclosing them in a translucent glowing capsule. Inside the headphones sound and image are re-united, the overarching synaesthetic structure of the contraption revealed.

Joel Stern, Real Time Magazine
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue79/8609