Tripping lights fantasticwith original laser shows

It's his eyes, his wife says.

Helen Mehan knows the secret of Tim Walsh's success, besides the 85-hour work weeks and the scorch marks on the walls of their small San Marcos office. Her husband is one of the most recognized laser artists in the world. He actually makes a living performing, she says, while next door a wild-haired Walsh fiddles with mirrors and wires.

It's a long, long way from their first date at "the hovel," a US$35-a-month college apartment in Denton where Walsh lived with a set of Irish bagpipes that at times, Helen says, could sound like a dying cow. He played Never on Sunday and Helen sat there thinking, "Who IS this guy?"

Walsh is a laser artist, which means his company, Laser Spectacles, creates light shows for whoever needs a little whiz-bang. Walsh does the programming and often the music, then uses a variety of high-powered lasers to project moving light on a screen or into special-effects fog.

A photographer from National Geographic recently followed him around for a week for an upcoming story, The Power of Light.

His work will be the house attraction at a planned Austin venue named Laser Sky.

Toshiba executives in 3-D glasses screamed and grabbed at the air in front of them during one of his presentations, where little laser pages floated out of a rotating virtual copier. He's performed laser shows for the recent Electric Daisy Carnival, a biker rave, a Texas Rodeo tour through the Middle East, the University of Texas at Austin freshman orientations, the Spoleto Festival, the Puerto Rico Symphony and the Shriners. He designs his own equipment, he has permanent laser installations in Uruguay and Taiwan, and he sometimes plays flute for the neighborhood mockingbirds.

He says, "I don't go out for less than US$3,500."

But what really sets Walsh apart from other laserists -- "There are about 30 people in the US like this" -- is his obsession with synaesthesia. That's when laser and music go together so well that people actually see what they're hearing.

He demonstrates. First, he sends through speakers the raw sound of laser images being drawn. It's like sitting inside an arcade game, but the effort won him awards. He's also created a program where lasers contain triggers that "play" a sampler and synthesizer. The sounds mimic the laser as it ripples like silk and then fans into a blast of color.