Twelve years ago, Bob Teory bought a tiny, low-powered laser system and began tinkering with it in his basement.

In an effort to turn his hobby into a business, Teory began creating special lighting effects for local bands with low budgets.

His big break came when he landed a contract with the Des Moines Science Center to do weekend laser light shows in the Center’s planetarium to the music of Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Led Zepplin.

He hasn’t looked back since.

He has moved from creating lighting for low-budget bands to producing laser light shows wowing crowds of 10,000 at the Super Bowl XXVI, the 1996 Olympic Torch Relay, Olympic Festival, Coca-Cola USA, Final Four and Nike Sports Entertainment.

Lasertainment Director of Sales and Marketing David Garner said the company now concentrates on the corporate side of production but also does entertainment and sports projects.

This allows the company to produce approximately 250 shows and demonstrations for a variety of other purposes, including corporate meetings, festivals, fairs, trade shows or any other special event every year.

But handling so many projects can cause problems.

Garner said the toughest part of the job is “juggling the priority of jobs and making sure we allocate enough time to each project.”

The company owns the world’s largest inflatable screen, a 60-foot-by-50-foot object that stands six stories high and is visible from nearly two miles away. Its 50-watt laser systems are the brightest and most powerful in today’s industry. They can be seen up to 25 miles away.

With these high-tech systems, Teory and his team of laser artists can take an image and spin it around in 3-D, zoom it to different sizes and combine it with slogans, special messages and related graphics.

Lasertainment also uses a long list of laser, pyrotechnic and fireworks effects for its productions, including theatrical flashes, silver and golden stars, colored smoke flame projectors, streamers and confetti.

These effects produce laser searchlights and billboards, aerial beams, fiber optics, cones and tunnels.

Lasertainment will entertain with two performances during Veishea. The first performance will be during the intermission between Kevin Nealon and The Nadas’ second performance Friday night at Dew the Rec.

A laser light spectacular will also be incorporated before and during The Crystal Method’s performance Saturday night at Rock Veishea.

“There will be a combination of live atmosphere effects with an introduction over mostly techno music with full graphics and animation,” Garner said.