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Jacs
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28 Feb 2011, 11:10 am

[quote="Yensid"]I am hypnotized by fire. I could watch it for hours. The way that it moves just fascinates me.

Me to. I would stay there all day If I could. The same with Christmas tree lights I could (and do) star at them for ages

My dream is to go and see the Northern lights in the artcic circle. Now that would be something.



Cornflake
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28 Feb 2011, 1:20 pm

tall-p wrote:
This is a mesmerizing display of lights I hope you enjoy.

http://sorisomail.com/partilha/74120.html
Ooh thanks, that's spectacular! I was practically bouncing up & down watching it. :lol:


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StuartN
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28 Feb 2011, 3:37 pm

I hate most artificial lights and bright light sources. Blue neon lights and spot lighting are the worst.

I love candle lights and flames, gentle flickering. I love the under-voltage incandescent and spirit lamps used in Asian evening markets.

I love the light in the last 15 minutes before the sun sets, especially over an inland body of water - I live above a river facing south and many days get treated to a real live Turner landscape.



TomC
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01 Mar 2011, 1:13 am

What is it about lights, fire and various other items, that means you can stare at them for a long time?

I am liking the comments, cheers, keep them coming :)



quietbird
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01 Mar 2011, 5:06 am

This is interesting. I'm particularly picky about lighting. Having bright sun beaming into a room drives me absolutely nuts, especially if there is no window opposite. Or just generally having a strong contrast between the brightness outside and darkness inside.

Those nasty bulk fluorescent tubes that light stores, schools, and offices make me sick.

I'm also touchy about where lights are placed, their color temperature, and whether they are diffused enough. Sharp shadows bug me as do lights that are too parallel to the horizon. I also need the light temperature to be no greater than 3500K. Often, especially at night, I throw a red or orange fabric over lights that are being too ostentatious.

I remember taking one of those aspie tests and being asked whether I was fascinated by lights. I figured it meant just staring at light bulbs or something. But after reading this thread and my own reply I suppose I do have a certain interest in lighting.



Rocky
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01 Mar 2011, 5:54 am

I went to high school (9th-12th grades) in the 1970's. There was still some pop culture left over from the 60's involving light shows and the like. I remember going to Spencer's Gifts and buying a small lamp that included a part that spun slowly from the heat of the bulb. The spinning part projected colored lights around a darkened room. Another similar "light show lamp" involved fiber optics which slowly spun from a motor. The fact that I bought these and other similar things should tell you that I enjoyed looking at them. I enjoy spinning lights especially (as long as they aren't too frantic.)

I have also enjoyed fountains that include changing lights. My best friend in High School had such a fountain.


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Last edited by Rocky on 01 Mar 2011, 6:34 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yensid
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01 Mar 2011, 6:03 am

TomC wrote:
What is it about lights, fire and various other items, that means you can stare at them for a long time?


I have no idea. It is something very primitive, very basic. Watching a fire makes me feel warm inside. It makes me feel safe and comfortable. It just seems to fill my mind. People have been staring at fire for tens of thousands of years. I said that fire was hypnotic. Maybe that was not a just a description; maybe fire is literally hypnotic. Who knows?

Fire is never the same twice. It is always changing. The things that it touches are always changing. A piece of wood turns black, slowly glows, and then falls apart. There is a sharp contrast between the brightness of the fire and the darkness of the ashes.


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CockneyRebel
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01 Mar 2011, 8:24 am

I've always been fascinated by lights. I like the LED ones the best. I was planning on decking out my apartment with them until something better came along. Perhaps I will do that next year. I like the white ones and the ones that give off a pale blue hue. There's also an artistwho makes LED pictures and paintings that light up in the dark.


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Cornflake
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01 Mar 2011, 9:06 am

Yensid wrote:
It just seems to fill my mind.
Yeah, that's the thing.
Not just with fire (I can stare at that for hours!), but with certain sequences, qualities or colours of lights too. Same thing with certain sounds: I get 'drawn in' and nothing else really exists for a while.


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StuartN
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01 Mar 2011, 12:13 pm

TomC wrote:
What is it about lights, fire and various other items, that means you can stare at them for a long time?


For me, it is that something has both a shape and no shape - the shape of the flame is the locus of something moving, shifting and dynamic. A flame is never the same twice, ever, and yet you know exactly what it looks like.

There is something absorbing and calming in watching flame that has a meditative effect. If someone says "don't think of anything" (which is like "don't think about an elephant"), then that thought fills your mind. Staring at a flame is calming and mind-clearing, replacing extraneous thoughts. I don't know how much the multisensory aspect comes into it - but flames can be heard, seen, smelled, felt (heat) and tasted. Only food and sex outclass flame in touching all five senses at the same time. Most other multisensory experiences (shopping malls, for instance) attack several of the senses with completely disconnected experiences, whereas the multisensory experience of flames is synchronised.

Sometimes at a communal fire (like Bonfire Night in the UK, St John's Eve in Ireland or July 11 in Northern Ireland) there is sometimes a primitive streak in the crowds, especially the men, like a return to early human instinctive behaviour.

There is a bit in "A Clockwork Orange" where Alex DeLarge describes staring at the light reflected in a ball of screwed up aluminium foil:

Part 3, Chapter 2, p6 wrote:
The mesto was near empty, it being still morning. It looked strange too, having been painted with all red mooing cows, and behind the counter was no veck I knew. But when I said: “Milk plus, large,” the veck with a like lean litso very newly shaved knew what I wanted. I took the large moloko plus to one of the little cubies that were all around this mesto, there being like curtains to shut them off from the main mesto, and there I sat down in the plushy chair and sipped and sipped. When I’d finished the whole lot I began to feel that things were happening. I had my glazzies like fixed on a malenky bit of silver paper from a cancer packet that was on the floor, the sweeping-up of this mesto not being all that horrorshow, brothers. This scrap of silver began to grow and grow and grow and it was so like bright and fiery that I had to squint my glazzies at it. It got so big that it became not only this whole cubie I was lolling in but like the whole Korova, the whole street, the whole city. Then it was the whole world, then it was the whole everything, brothers, and it was like a sea washing over every veshch that had ever been made or thought of even. I could sort of slooshy myself making special sort of shooms and govoreeting slovos like ‘Dear dead idlewilds, rot not in variform guises’ and all that cal. Then I could like feel the vision beating up in all this silver, and then there were colours like nobody had ever viddied before, and then I could viddy like a group of statues a long long long way off that was like being pushed nearer and nearer and nearer, all lit up by very bright light from below and above alike, O my brothers. This group of statues was of God or Bog and all His Holy Angels and Saints, all very bright like bronze, with beards and bolshy great wings that waved about in a kind of wind, so that they could not really be of stone or bronze, really, and the eyes or glazzies like moved and were alive. These bolshy big figures came nearer and nearer and nearer till they were like going to crush me down, and I could slooshy my goloss going ‘Eeeeee’. And I felt I had got rid of everything - platties, body, brain, name, the lot -and felt real horrorshow, like in heaven. Then there was the shoom of like crumbling and crumpling, and Bog and the Angels and Saints sort of shook their gullivers at me, as though to govoreet that there wasn’t quite time now but I must try again, and then everything like leered and smecked and collapsed and the big warm light grew like cold, and then there I was as I was before, the empty glass on the table and wanting to cry and feeling like death was the only answer to everything."



Last edited by StuartN on 02 Mar 2011, 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Mahlon
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01 Mar 2011, 3:49 pm

I am all about staring into flames, spacing out looking at lights (or rather past them usually to get the light refraction distortion), and when it comes to TV, I can't keep my eyes off it (the lights and motion suck me in, main reason I have a TV, but no channels or antenna).

As for the video and the projection animation, that was just phenomenal, really enjoyed that, and found it so stimulating, the lights, walking through how they accomplished that with the technology available, etc.

Here in the Silicon Valley (San Jose, CA) we have a festival that represents the artwork that is emerging in the digital age, and the festival is every other year, and aptly named 01 (Zero One). Here is their site in case you wanted to check it out for future events or more about how its run and such:

Zero One San Jose Digital Art Festival

In particular the other video reminded me of a few years ago when they did the second 01 Festival, they used projection from the inside of the San Jose City Hall Rotunda, to create a living, growing, digital tentacle monster (no, don't think Hentai :P ). This was absolutely amazing, it started every evening at sunset, and carried on until sunrise each morning during the festival. The tentacles would start out small on the ground level only, and were an array of bright colors, and every few mins they would pulse and grow, reaching higher and higher up the sides of the rotunda. The culmination in the later evening/early morning was the tentacles reaching high up the sides and swaying and pulsing. Was truly amazing to watch, and they don't do the art or artist justice, but here's some videos on youtube from it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7opXG1U-Io[/youtube]

And an interview with the artist:

Youtube interview with Incursion Artist (City Hall Rotunda Tentacle Animation from 2nd SJ01)

Enjoy :)



tall-p
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01 Mar 2011, 4:08 pm

I'm glad many of you all enjoyed this cool video http://sorisomail.com/partilha/74120.html

When I was a kid back in the '40s lol I loved the lights at night when we were in the car. Lights were much dimmer then than now. I remember being especially enamored by the dashboard lights... they were so captivating the oranges greens reds and blues. And outside the neon lights flickering, the humming of the car and the sense of being enclosed.


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Moonlite_2016
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26 Mar 2016, 5:24 am

I found this site as a search result for "obsessed with colourful and flashing lights".

The reason I did the search is because I had spent most the last 12 hours through the night, sitting at my dining room table, playing with LED patry lights of every variety imaginable. At a glance around me, possibly over 100 little LED lights...

My LED interest began a few years ago, initially with the view to start an online business selling LED lighting and party accessories. But I enjoyed the party accessories and colour changing LEDs so much that I don't want to part with any of my vast collection of items, now stacked in cases and boxes in every room as well as in every available drawer and surface top in my home.

I spend hours wrapping statues, ornaments and tables in LED strip lights and love watching the waves of coloured light float over my home. I have LED flowers all over my garden and in vases, I love twinkling string lights, laptop fans that create LED images and words, LED accessories in my hair, on my fingers, on my ears, around my wrists, in my mouth, around my ankles, around my neck, under my glass, in my drink – when appropriate, obviously. I like having lots of lights to play with. It might be odd, but that's ok, surely?

I don't feel like there is anything I have to 'fix' other than my storage issues, but I am interested to find out if this is merely a therapeutic outlet I have found to relieve stress, or if there is something more to it – and if I share a similar interest with others. People always ask "so, how did it come about that you love lights so much?". I wish I knew...



TheBadguy
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26 Mar 2016, 8:49 am

I'm a basic light obsessive. I just really love to flip lights on and off. It's more like a compulsion to do and I love to watch the lights flicker on and off. Such a child.

One of my habits is when moving into a new place. I play with the lights. For no apparent reason other than because I can.



Jo_B1_Kenobi
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26 Mar 2016, 8:54 am

I am completely fascinated by a specific type of light which is more natural in origin than electric lamps. I love the light that comes through trees in the summer when the leaves are big and the tree is moving in the wind. Or the light that comes off reflections of moving water. I think they call it dappled light. I just can't get enough of how it moves. I could watch it forever.

Here's a link to a YouTube video of the kind of thing I mean...



The other light which really amazes me is the light produced by a nuclear reaction in a reactor. It's incredibly blue...


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Riik
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26 Mar 2016, 9:09 am

Sometimes I can stare at a light for hours... sometimes that same light can be painful to look at. Kinda weird...


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