Scintillation

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.

How to make a baroque ballroom even more baroque? Who else but the French know how to play with courtois style: absolutely mind-blowing light projections by Xavier Chassaing... hypnotised!

It Takes Three "You" To Make Imagination Work

We are carried away with Syd Mead's designs and übermentality. Oh, and his Blade Runner and Tron concepts. Can anyone predict the future better than the master-mind behind the Future worlds?

2019: A Future Imagined from Flat-12 on Vimeo.

Lighting Trends As Seen By Light.In

Good news or bad news? 2011 is almost here, and the lighting industry is on the edge. It is the edge of biggest challenges and changes, the Age of Discovery has left us with plenty of ideas but with limited resources. Is the world of lighting ready for it?

1. MOTLEY CREW

The trendiest places are diverting from concepts to anti-concepts, using all that has come to hand for lighting. The creative spirit combines all kinds of fixtures, old, new, elegant, clumsy, big, small... in one spot. Seemingly versatile, all luminaires are bound by one type of the light source, thus creating the perfectly thought-of effect. (Anti)-conceptual?

Shit Store, Stavanger, Norway

More >> Waste Wood, Fuselage Cupboards... and Bestlite

2. LIVING LIGHTS

Switch is dead. Controls take over. We witness the rise of a control system. Every project specification reads DALI, an acronymfor digital addressable lighting interface, or simply, a system operating each light fitting as an individual address (same way as PCs in your office are connected in a network). Lighting control systems are usually a part of a larger building management system that reigns over security, ventilation, and on and on. For an ordinary user it means: we now can officially disregard that old switch on the wall. Lights will go off automatically.

Dubai Mall, UAE

More >> Can You Hear It Ticking?

3. iLIGHT

Last year we wrote about specialized apps. This year, you can download onto your iPhone everything from electronic catalogues to light effect simulator and cost calculators. We are using, among others, a mobile version of a light calculation program available online @ fagerhult.mobi

Louis Poulsen catalogue and LED ROI calculator

4. HIDE-N-SEEK

Ambivalence of a human nature: we spend fortunes on luxury goods in the time of recession, we speak sustainability losing lumens and kilowatts behind kilometers of coves and niches. Minimum is maximum. Like it or not, cove lighting is in trend. Check!

Terminal 3, Dubai Airport, UAE

5. WINDOW SHOPPING IS FREE

Shop windows have become a very distinctive separate form of visual art. Dedicated companies (we like and follow New Crazy Colours) are utilizing transmedia to further accentuate the idea. Does window display merchandizing demand special forms of light fittings?

DSquared2 Boutique, UAE

6. MATERIALIZE IT

From intangible waves to tangible walls, light becomes a decoration or a building material of its own. Soon we will be looking for a conventional luminaire but finding glowing surfaces. Manufacturers will be having hard time with all their punching and bending machines. Acquisition of a wallpaper factory or a concrete-mixer is definitely a plan.

LiTraCon (light transmitting concrete). Photo courtesy - Litracon, Hungary

7. TERMINATOR

Prognosis for 2020: LED will replace most of the light sources in different spheres of application. The most resistant to the assault is a T5 lamp (doesn't it look like a Jedi sword?) Fast technology shift plus shortage of ballast and gear components are the main causes of this penetration.

LED penetration by lighting application as efficacy improves and costs reduce:

Retail, Outdoor and Professional (compact fluorescent) - most affected sectors, Professional T5 - least impact of LED

Stay on the light side and May the Force be with you!

Light.In

Can You Hear It Ticking?

DUBAI, UAE

Rolex tower undoubtedly stands out of the fence of tall buildings populated Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road. Not only its ruled geometry but effect on a daylight and moonlit landscape that impress.
Pass it at noon, and the zenith Sun twinkles you across the sequence of opaque and transparent glass panels. Stop by after sunset and hundreds of sparkles flow down a colossal coal.

Brilliantly engineered and performed, LED strips hidden in the panels of glass flash controlled by DMX protocol, as if connected to a meticulous watch mechanism. And it is the noise of the Sheikh Zayed, otherwise you would hear it ticking.

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

Having spent seven long years in a classical choreography school, I appreciate the intricacies of the body language and the ways to either enhance or to hide the emotions conveyed by it. The right atmosphere is always a key to creating the feeling of catharsis when watching a dance...

...and Wade Robson's modern interpretation of John Mayer' song is a perfect proof. Beautiful - with the lighting set up of two projectors installed on a wall opposite the mirror, casting shadowy intimate and dramatic light and accentuating the body talk. Sensuous, verrrry!

Moving in the darkness

A TUNNEL

Can you count how often you are in a complete darkness? The complete darkness derives us of certain sensations or skills that we obtain during our light experiences through years. A small proof of this: tunnels of one of the Dubai aqua-parks. Your brain sends no signals of whether it is going to be right or left turn, whether there are any obstacles on your way. Information is perceived this very moment of action incapable of any predictions. Navigating in light we 'plan' the route through the vision, darkness leaves us with the only question: what's next?

To cut it short: light operates our lives, darkness brings a pinch of fun

Electrrrrric

JACK JOHNSON'S ALBUM Sleep Through The Static was made with 100% solar energy: all the songs were recorded onto analogue tape machines powered by the sun in Hawaii and Los Angeles.

That's how the music (acoustic songs performed by a surfer singer who gets inspired by the ocean waves and open skies) seamlessly blends with the light... and you go on whistling his tunes and feeling the sun on your skin and thinking of how pleasures can sometimes be guilt-free and environmentally conscious.