PLASMA!

This is my first successful try at a plasma encasement. The yogi in lotus position is encased in the clear bell-housing. Inside of this is krypton and neon gas. And, inside of the yogi's head is an encased piece of copper rod. There is an electrode attached behind the seated man, and that charges the gas and creates an activated and interactively lit piece.

The effect that I was going for with the copper in the head, was that it would attract the excited particles to the area where I placed it: the third eye of the yogi. Unfortunately, there was either not enough mass to attract the plasma, or it was seated too deeply in the head. Instead of a very direct draw to the third eye, the result is instead a very general and all covering effect around the head, which is still interesting, but not exactly what I wanted.
This is my next design. I still wanted to see the effect happen that I was going for in the first piece, so I altered my approach. Instead of working solid, I decided to blow the head and place it over the electrode. In this way, the lighting is initiated from the neck and it travels up the head, wherein it resides until it finds the hole that I put in the third eye location, so that it will escape from there. It then enters the bell-housing in which it begins to really whip around and create a very satisfying lighting effect. I am happy with the way this one came out! )
This is the last design I worked on for this plasma series. Here I decided to get rid of the housing, and let the heads themselves be the container in which the gasses would be held. I opened a hole in both of their mouths, and sealed their lips together, maintaining their holes open, so that the light will travel from one head to the other, through the lips.

The overall experimentation with this idea has been very satisfying to have finally accomplished this goal that I set out to accomplish about five years ago, but, it is a fairly laborious process with a lot of technical frustrations. I need to revise a couple of key points before I return to it.

I will, in my next post, attach some video of what these look like lit up.