Black Lights

Like most people I know, I first discovered blacklight posters when I was in college. Black lights were part of the day-to-day life in the dorms. A lot of us would like to just get mellow after class and stare off at the posters while listening to good music in the dorm rooms. It was a pretty relaxing way to unwind, all things considered.

Black lights were also a feature of many of the clubs we went to. Although for many people the rave scene was over by the mid-90s, at the particular town I was in it kept going for a lot longer. Generator parties, warehouse parties and the like were not just for high school kids either. A lot of the college kids loved going into those parties, and the scene was absolutely stupendous. The black lights made everyone's clothing glow and you could put interesting decorations on yourself that would be invisible until you got into the club itself.

What I did not realize until recently was how many more subtle touches you can add using black lights. Black light is just concentrated ultraviolet light, and the way it makes things glow is pretty simple. Certain materials will suck up the ultraviolet light and emit it again in the visible spectrum. You don't really need black lights to make them glow either. Fluorescent materials will glow in the late evening almost as well as they will glow under a black light. By using different accents of bright colors, you can make your house literally glow.

Of course, subtle use of black lights can really enhance this effect. For example, you can decorate artworks with black light as a way to bring out certain colors in them. By combining blacklight LEDs with conventional light sources, you can create illumination that will make the whole picture visible and also pull out certain brightly colored traces in it. I do this frequently when lighting my own paintings, and many artists I know do the same thing with their own works.

Ultimately, I suppose, the real thrill of black lights isn't using them for subtle effect. The draw of them is, of course, their use to illuminate black light posters and the dance floors in clubs. Even so, it is neat to know that you can do other things with them. As an artist, any new technique I can find and use is appreciated.

Summary