that is AWESOME.

Freeeeow

The projector is 5K, and the camera is .5K, maybe $300 for the laser... Outlay is like $6000.

They are a lot richer in Holland :)

Exactly what I was gonna say. I want one of those! Of course, just the laser on its own its pretty awesome.

I really like what GRL is doing. My favorite one like this is the drip sessions.

OK, I've seen a lot of presentations with laser pointers and they are hard to aim precisely at distances of 6ft. so at, like , 300ft the chances of deftly drawing a tag perfectly like they do over and over again is impossible. I'm sure their system works but to get what they showed was probably done on a wacom tablet.

Try it out on a wall, it will look like you wrote it with your left hand. FAKE.

You obviously have no comprehension of how this device functions The Lab. Either that, or I've lost all my ability to sense sarcasm.

That's awesome! Their source code contains a demo input file (bin/kpn320.mov)5... anyone up for trying to write a mac version with Quartz Composer?

@The Lab: Look man, you have no idea what you're talking about. Sure, it's hard, but so is running a marathon, writing a novel, or building a bridge. Saying "Look, try it once! You can't do it!" is extremely short-sighted. These guys are professional artists, not your run-of-the mill internet user.

@The Lab:

But remember, even if you get one successfully built, you still need some art skills to properly do graffiti.

Just 'cause you don't doesn't mean that neither does anyone else.

The dripping paint effect was clever. Must have confused a lot of innocent passersby. Good thing they didn't try it in Boston "Oh noes radioactive paint! It's a terrorist dirty bomb!" =D

HOLY CRAP
since when does holland have a laser light bridge?!?!?! Its just like The Dig!

Those guys must be terrifyingly good at Wii Target.

That can't be healthy on the eyes of the people in those windows looking out to see where that bright blue light is coming from.

You could get better results obviously just using a graphics tablet on a black background in a paint program, but using a laser on the building itself is way cooler. It would be even cooler if the guy painting had different colour lasers that would case different colours to show up on the building, maybe bright pink and bright green

@Zamemee:
@Xenobiologista:

Ok, the FAKE was admittedly sarcastic, I've been hanging out in the Digg forums too much. However even in the photo above notice that the blue image tracks the laser closely in some places but near the bottom the laser and line are out of sync. Also the video shows some tags going up with no laser that look very neat while others with laser are horribly blocky. All I 'm saying is that some of the neat ones may have been pre-rendered to look nice.

Think about it this way, from that distance a fraction of a degree of movement produces a swing of many tens of feet. The "artist" has no support for their hand and must keep their arm very still. This is like someone tagging a mailbox with a 30ft marker from across the street.

@bigtimes:

I have tagged, I have been arrested for tagging, and I can assure you that learning to tag is nothing like training for a marathon. It is making up a "cool" name for yourself and then writing your imaginary name all over town trying to get some attention.

What these guys did is cool, I'm just a little sceptical about the results considering the difficult interface.

Are these green lasers the ones that can pop popcorn from outerspace ?

Let's hope nobody was looking out of those windows when the green laser of death flashed by.

I have participated in this activity you call tagging also. for a long time.
the longer you tag the more control you have and more precise your lines are. Just like drawing anything else. So in essence it takes practice just like all those other things mentioned, you can't just pick up the marker and be the best, just like you can't run a marathon without practice and win. granted there is less physical ability in graffiti, but the hand-eye coordination takes a long time to be good at it. The more practice the neater, and less it looks like a 2 year olds scribble. just because you were unable to master the art of writing doesn't mean other people can't.

keep being skeptical

If I lived in taht building and I had that thing flashing into my window... let's just hope the cops get to the projector before I sneak up on it with a baseball bat.

Kent....

It is also possible that the software has some smoothing compensation to help eliminate any hand shake from that far away...

@Cav:

Yeah, that's an interesting point and I had thought of that, the pencil tool in Illustrator has that same effect but there are characteristic shapes produced by smoothing algorythyms and I didn't see any of those artifacts, perhaps they are using a different algorhythm (how do you spell that word?). You'd need a lot of smoothing to steady the hand shakes from that distance.

@goldplated_j:
Sure practice makes perfect but would you rather get up with HiLites or Krink? The tools matter and if I asked you to do a piece with a Sharpie on a 10ft pole, I don't think any amount of practice would help, it is gonna look bad. Now try a Sharpie on a 300ft pole and you get a sense of what these guys are doing. I'm not saying this isn't dope, I'm just critically thinking. I cite images from the video and simple geometric observations. I list my reasons to be sceptical, you just make personal attacks.

If you bothered to check their site, they make all the software and source code available. It's not fake, there's no crazy smoothing filters or anything, and marking such a large surface from even 100' away isn't too difficult. A laser beam does not weigh anything, whereas a sharpie on a 300' pole might be a bit unwieldy.

This was up on Engadget, that building is abandoned, there's nobody living there, stop making inane comments about looking out the window with a laser incoming.

The sharpie analogy was meant to highlight the difficulties of geometry associated with moving an arm so long. I am aware that it is effortless to move a laser pointer.

To put it another way, imagine drawing with a 10,000 dpi mouse. Tiny movements would result in massive lines, making it difficult to control for a person with even the finest motor control or practice.

I did check their site and while the settings they listed did not include smoothness, that only makes it more suspicious. Just try drawing a straight line from that distance. You WILL see shakes. Shit I can't even hold my hand still but that's probably just withdrawl.

@The Lab:

You're wrong.