Neon is great, and documenting it is a fine idea, especially since it's slowly but surely vanishing from the urban landscape. Here in Tokyo, for example, amazing, brilliant neon facades have long been the norm for the ubiquitous pachinko parlors (some of my own documentation of that here), but they are being rapidly supplanted by much more pedestrian facades that don't use neon. posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:06 PM on May 4, 2011
My dreamworld includes the neon of Film Noir, New York, and the film 'Streets of Fire.'
It's not just noble gases. Mercury - as a UV-emitting vapor - is used in most of the coated glass tubes, but neon certainly can drive some of the shades of red. posted by jet_silver at 8:16 PM on May 4, 2011
As Dan Flavin has shown so well, neon is not just beautiful line drawing with colors. It's an almost alive pulsation that includes you in its glow. That's why I have tried to shoot some in short-short videos. (IANAP: I am not a photographer.) posted by bru at 6:24 AM on May 5, 2011
I took a neon class in NYC years ago, down near Chinatown. At lunchtime we wandered around the neighborhood. There were a lot of signs in Chinese, which seemed to me to be a lot more intricate and harder to bend than English signs. posted by MtDewd at 8:46 AM on May 5, 2011
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:06 PM on May 4, 2011