Monday, September 24, 2012
Lady Gaga’s Debuts A Light Wig Made From Fiber Optic Strands [Video]
PSFK: Lady Gaga has introduced one of the newest inventions from the Haus of Gaga, a handmade wig by Frederic Aspiras that they’ve been working on for over six months. The wig is made of a mixture of real human hair and fiber optics, and was inspired by the idea of a Disney Princess going to a rave.
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17 comments:
ARE YOU KIDDING THIS IS INCREDIBLE! Wow! This wig can be controlled from the lighting console??? I am astounded and amazed and I would like to play with this instantly. When can we get a light up wig special for Carnegie Mellon? Let's work on this please. Here is a very good example of successful integration between costume and lighting. A lot of times designers that want to involve lights in costumes fail at combining the elements and instead just have a regular piece that also has some lights on it, making things look disjointed and awkward. I am all for the Disney Princess Rave. Definitely great. Also definitely a great toy to give to the lighting designer! I would love to see how the designer works with it.
As much as I don't like Gaga this is really really cool. Like Reilly said Ive seen good integration of lighting into costumes but it is few and far between. It is cool that Gaga has both the crazy far out ideas and the money to make them happen. I wonder how long it will be until things like this become cheap enough to be feasible in theater. I just watched the video on this blog about the 35' kinetic sculpture and had a similar reaction. Both things show crazy new developments in possible theater technology but in completely different aspects of theater. The world is an exciting new place and gets crazier by the day. Imagine what we will be able to do in 10 years?
This appears to be a really cool implementation of light into a wig. The fiber optics do respond almost equally to human hair, which is something I was concerned would not be as effective before I watched the video. I like that the device appears to be normal hair or at least a normal wig until the lighting is activated. Although she didn't mention it in the video, I am curious if the wig can RGB color mix, or if that subject was simply not yet revealed in the teaser video. I am also curious if the wireless DMX telemetry is all contained within the wig, or if it has to run a cable down to a belt pack (which I assume is the case). I am interested in seeing more of how the wig actually works, but then that would give away the magic of the effect to her audience, wouldn't it?
HOLY CRAP THAT IT THE COOLEST THING! I want one, I wonder how much one of those must cost. Thought I love these artists that challenge the entertainment world to keep up with their wild ideas and endeavors. This is part of the reason why I want to do lighting technology because everyday people are coming up with new lights, places to put them, use them, and control them. Now that I think of it this must be part of a lighting designer's dream.
I also love when lights are incorporated in costuming, it ads a whole other dimension to what the designer can accomplish, effect wise, in their shows. Using a costume, or wig, as a source of light onstage is so dramatic it can only be exciting (if it is tasteful of course).
It is innovations like these that make me so excited about the world I will be going into after I graduate.
Not that high school matters, but for my senior year musical production of Pippin (thanks to CMU), I tried a similar thing to make hats glow in the dark. Eventually we went the black-light route, but still: the technical intricacy that goes in to creating things like this, especially when they are on a mobile object (or god forbid and actor)! I know this has been said a few times, but I feel the importance of this deems mentioning it again ok: the interdisciplinary combination, which makes CMU so awesome is prevalent here. Lighting usuall has to observe and work with the costme fabrics and colors, but very rarely are the costumes the lights!
Leave it to gaga to make a real looking light up wig. Its quite impressive how technology is being incorporated into more and more elements of a production. Costumes just used to be fabric, but now they are strands of fiber optics, light sources, batteries and wires. With the advancement of technology the theatricality of every element of a production has increased significantly. I was impressed when Dancelight had light up costumes for Colours last year. Being able to think outside the box or your specialty, or have multiple specialties is becoming a necessity for individuals.
This is a cool idea and was really well executed. The wig (at least in the video) looks realistic when off which can be quite a feat when trying to integrate technology into costumes because its unnatural and doesn't always blend well. And of course the wig is even cooler when its on. The way that they disguised the electronics for the fiber optics is also impressive. For concerts that are as big as the ones lady gaga puts on technology like that really doesn't have to be that well disguised because all of the audience is far away. But the designers of the wig managed to anyway.
This is insane! I know that they have used lights in costumes but the idea of using it in hair is completely genius. I can't imagine how much time it would have taken to create this wig seeing as it was completely hand made but I have so much respect for who did make it. I remember how in Tron legacy they used lights in their costumes and hooked them up to the lighting system to remotely control them. With the new technology in this wig, movies like Tron can do so many new things. This wig has a ton of practical applications in both film and stage, though I see it working better in film because if something goes wrong, the shot can always be redone. That option is not available in theater. Also, if there were a children's show for tangled the wig would be perfect.
This is fantastic! What really inspires me, is the way that we are meshing the lines between technology and the human body.
Not only are we creating groundbreaking artistic explorations that are visually pleasing and interesting;
But we are also complicating our understanding of art, the human body, and technology as a whole
Not a huge Lady Gaga fan, but she gets the fact that making her concerts theatrical and innovative make her more interesting and amazing for designers to work with. This is great!!! I also wonder if it changes colour as well or if it's just the white light, but I am completely impressed at the fact that it looks exactly like hair when her stylist combed it. This also makes me wonder if she is going to have a sequence when she wears a costume with the wig and both of them are controlled by the board. This is what the fusion of art and technology is all about.
What I love about the music industry is how ideas like this can be conceived, and actually brought to fruition. The technology that has to have gone into this could very well have other applications that theatre can mooch off of. Without the financial backing from Gaga, that would not have been possible.
It is also a good testament to design in general. You have an idea: a disney princess at a rave. From there you think of ways this conceptual idea can manifest, and eventually, you end up with this. There is something magical about the process, and is what attracted me to the area of entertainment design in the first place.
I am excited to see how this technology develops into other applications, and see the her dancing in it soon.
This is unbelievable. The technology that exists today can be manipulated in so many ways and we may not even know it. This is just one example of how it can be done and I think it's amazing how you can tie it back to theatre and shows in general. Having this revolutionize how we work as designers and theatre technicians in general. This makes me feel like Disney's Tangled can now go from just being a well animated movie to a full on stage production and that excites me so much! And why let it stop there when there are so many opportunities to improve and grow on what we have to offer to this world?
Wow that's really awesome!!! I can't believe how well the fiber optic strands move! They really do look and act like real hairs do. At first I was a bit concerned that this wig would be one of those kinds that you can buy at Halloween stores, something like: http://www.makebelievecostume.com/images_product/large/Rubies/50939.jpg . But clearly Gaga's is far more realistic. Of course her wig is of a far higher quality, which is part of the reason why it looks much more realistic. Nevertheless her creative ingenuity really shines here. I also LOVE that her wig can be controlled by the lighting designer... so cool! Because the wig looks so realistic when turned off, I'm sure many audience members wouldn't even know it was a wig, until it magically came to life of course. Very innovative, and sure to be a thrill at her shows.
I am extremely excited about this and how it is going to be incorporated in her shows. I don't know how much cost wise this would be but if she were to have the other performers also have these it would add so much more depth to her performances. I saw Lady Gaga last year in Atlanta and it was absolutely amazing with all the special effects and sudden changes with the lighting. I feel this new technology could make the Gaga Shows even more expensive. Cost has always been an issue for Gaga. The sheer amount of special effects at the shows were amazing. If this could be done with little cost by all means I would love to see these at the next show.
As with Will, I would be much more interested in this wig if it had the ability to change color or even form itself into text/images. Fiber optics have been around for years now, and while they never have before been implemented with real hair, the concept is very much short of revolutionary. It seems like nowadays if Madame Gaga told her fans that she invented the internet, most would believe her. While I have nothing against her or her music, I do however find myself a little uneasy when I see how large Lady Gaga's character has become.
This new invention, even if it is for lady gaga, is revolutionary. it will allow designers everywhere to broaden there designs and make accomplishing them easier.
its interesting to see that it takes someone as balls out crazy as lady gaga's style to present an opportunity to create something like this. Im with reilly though on the idea of disney princess rave. its actually relatively simple fiber optics technology which has been around for a while. its impressive to see the outfit it small enough and light enough to work into a wig
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