Because Light Collective firmly believe that “all work and no play” makes for a very dull life, we like to do things that make us happy and fulfil a need for education, creativity and general coolness. So this month’s activity was to undertake an intensive one day neon workshop. We travelled up to Wakefield in the North of England (far north if you are Sharon, not quite so far if you are Martin) where the unique Neon Workshop is based.

We found the space when we spotted the tiniest neon sign ever that says (wait for it) ‘neon’. Set up by artist Richard Wheater, the neon workshop offers one-on-one or group tutorials in the art of making neon…and, believe us, it is an art! All our big ideas were quickly downgraded when we realised that our best effort would be to produce a neon squiggle not a whole Goethe quote.

Our private tutorial was led by Julia Bickerstaff, surely the worlds best authority on the history of neon and also an amazing artist. The day started with a trip through the history of neon. This was followed by a lesson in how its made from the glass blowing bit through to the gas filling bit (done with a Heath Robinson-style contraption called an Electron Bombarder).

It was an eye opener to discover the versatility of this vessel for light. For years we have been specifying miles of the stuff in architectural coves, but never realised that it doesn’t need to be a tube, it can be a blown shape – Chihuly style, that it can utilise coloured glass, that it can crackle and it can be a thing of great beauty.

The middle section of the day involved a hands on opportunity to try it all out. Messing with broken glass and fire sounded terrifying but Julia made it look so easy and safe, that we got stuck in. Trying to create bends and turns by melting glass in a giant bunsen burner flame whilst blowing through the glass at the same time is actually super hard and produced lots of items that didn’t look anything like Julia’s. But one tiny blister and a small cut later, we had (and we want to say perfected but it really wouldn’t be true) created an array of quite dodgy looking squiggles. The feeling of molten glass going all drippy and pliable is like no other and we got a childlike pleasure from making anything.

The rest of the workshop is dedicated to making something to takeaway and we quickly realised that we couldn’t master a single letter in the time left so Julia kindly, swiftly and expertly created us a neon word each. She filled them with neon and sealed them for us to take home. As Julia has worked on all sorts of incredible projects around the world, we both felt quite honoured to have a little piece of her art.

We came away filled with wonder about the art of making neon and full of ideas for its use. Neon lighting is so ubiquitous in the world that it sits within our environment without us even noticing it. Look about you, at every shop and pub sign to see how much it is used. But sadly even though it is used in lots of signage applications and other places where LEDs fail, even though it has survived every decade when other lamps have gone out of vogue, even though it has remained the epitome of cool and is loved by everyone, we are still forsaking it as a light source. The majority of the UK neon factories have closed down, the glass comes from Italy and there are hardly any master craftsmen left, because we have decided that LEDs can do everything.

The neon workshop is working hard to keep this dying art alive. Please support them. It’s a brilliant experience. We will definitely be going  back.

Links:
Neon Workshops – http://www.neonworkshops.com/
Julia Bickerstaff – http://www.neonunity.co.uk/
Richard Wheater – http://www.richardwheater.com

www.lightcollective.net
Read more from Light Collective here

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Neon Is The New Black appeared first on illumni – Lighting Design, Light Art, Lighting Jobs.

If you have ever heard Martin Lupton and Sharon Stammers (who are Light Collective) speak (and illumni has), you will appreciate their unique ability to combine entertaining delivery interspersed with pertinent knowledge. You walk away with the feeling that you have just been exposed to something worthwhile. (60 minutes of your life you won’t want back).

They will be speaking at Daylight Thinking, a two week long conference hosted by the University of Florida and Professional Lighting Design Association to explore and celebrate the ‘Culture of Daylight As An Expressive Device’.

Set against the backdrop of the Italian Veneto in the ‘history dripping’ town of Vicenza, ‘Daylight Thinking’ is the one conference you should attend this year if you can only attend one conference this year.

For more details see daylightthinking.com

Read illumni’s interview with Light Collective

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After a Sunday of nail biting, focussing and preparation, Monday 15th April saw the One Beam of Light exhibition finally open at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The first discussions with Concord on the project started just before Light and Building in 2012 so the project has been a full year in the making.

One Beam of Light is a global photography project that seeks to inspire and engage people based on the creative use of light. A beam of light is defined as: a ray or collection of parallel rays emitted from the sun or other luminous body. But we know a beam of light is more than this. A single beam of light creates an incredibly powerful and evocative image. Whether you consider the archetypal shot of rays of light from a cloud, daylight streaming in through the oculus of the Pantheon or the windows of Grand Central Station, there is something in the purity of a single beam of light that moves us all.

Our idea was to create a collection of stunning and inspirational images that start with a single source — light stripped to its purest form — and use them to spread the word about light to a wider audience. We are so pleased that its not just an event for the lighting industry and that after the opening night, the exhibition is open to the general public until the 20th April.

Contrary to our initial fears that we would have to submit loads of images with fake names on them, around 380 entries were recieved from all over the world. These were scrutinised by our esteemed Curation Panel of Gerd Pfarre, Keith Bradshaw, Matt Clark, Paul James and Terence Woodgate. The shortlist ran to over 100 images, which we then curated to showcase the philosophy behind the One Beam of Light project. The final selection of 31 images was reproduced in large format for the London exhibition.

All of the shortlisted images can be seen in the printed newspaper, available as a free hand-out and online. The publication guides visitors around the exhibition as well as giving readers an insight into the people who created each image and their inspiration. http://onebeamoflight.com/site/page/newspaper

The project has been made possible through the generous support of Concord Lighting and we would like to thank them, all of the people who took time to enter and all the attendees on Monday night (especially those people that travelled from the far flung corners of the world to attend the opening – Brazil, USA, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Holland were spotted in the house!)

We would also like to thank GNI Projects for creating us a special One Beam of Light laser installation.

This initiative was about creating an opportunity for us to work in a truly collective way and to spread the word about light to a wider audience so we also need to thank all the participants who took part and provided us with an inspired image so we could show the world what light can do….

More details and all the submitted images are available on the website: http://onebeamoflight.com/site/gallery

If anyone wants to help us bring One Beam of Light to their country, please get in touch.

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One Beam of Light Exhibition, London appeared first on illumni – Lighting Design, Light Art, Lighting Jobs.

March 25 saw a congregation of some of Europe’s top lighting designers and friends gather at ‘The Deck’ at the National Theatre London for the inaugural illumni infinity awards. If you weren’t there this is what it looked like. If you were there you’re probably in it. View it here.

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The infinity awards were established to celebrate the unlimited creativity of Lighting Designers and provide a truly global awards program.

An outstanding international panel of judges generously and tirelessly subjected well over 100 entries to three rounds of scrupulous examination to arrive at just 9 Gold, 10 Silver and 13 Bronze Statue winners.

illumni will be visiting London to host a presentation/exhibition of the finalists and metal winning work on Monday, March 25th.

We’d like to invite lighting designers, architects and interior designers to join us for an entertaining evening of high profile guest speakers, including:

Sharon Stammers + Martin Lupton, Light Collective (Speaker)

Light Collective isn’t your average consultancy. We are different.
For a a start, we don’t write biographies any more.
We have experience. Sixteen years each.
We have education. A Phd and an MSc.
We have diversity. Backgrounds in theatre and engineering.
We teach, we promote, we innovate.
There are only two of us. This allows us to be fast and versatile and creates opportunity for collaboration instead of competition.
We have no office. This means we can work anywhere in the world.
We concentrate on doing what we are good at. Our strengths lie on our creativity, our ability to connect people, our need to inspire and engage and to effect change.
Light Collective is fueled by our passion for light.

Rogier van der Heide, Chief Design Officer – Philips Lighting (Speaker)

Rogier van der Heide is a well known designer in the public and commercial realm, and VP and Chief Design Officer of Philips Lighting. Rogier focuses on innovation-led design as an enabler of bridging technology and the creation of meaningful, life-enhancing solutions. He has 20 years of experience in engaging, inspiring, three-dimensional design that fuses light, image projection, architecture and product design to create memorable, authentic experiences around the world.

Until 2010, Rogier van der Heide was Director with Arup and the Global Leader of Arup Lighting. In that role, Rogier has been responsible for innovative, creative and well-executed projects all over the world. If you are looking for more info on Arup Lighting, please see here.

Rogier has received over 20 individual design awards, and his design team at Philips got accoladed over 35 times with iF Awards and Reddot Awards, the leading global industry prizes for innovative design. Rogier’s work is widely recognised as leading in the field of creative and independent design.

Many architects work together with Rogier, who has completed projects in collaboration with Renzo Piano, Ben van Berkel, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Michael Graves, Cesar Pelli, Rob Krier and many others.

Rogier delivers many lectures, presentations and seminars about design, light, business, and strategic design at many international conferences. His talk inspiring talk on TED.com about the beauty of darkness has attracted over 500,000 viewers. Rogier was also Professor at the Technical University of Graz, Austria.

Matthew Clark, Creative Director – United Visual Artists (Speaker)

Matthew Clark is a founder and Creative Director of United Visual Artists, a London-based art and design practice developing work at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, live performance and responsive installation.  Through research and collaboration UVA explore diverse opportunities and environments to produce an innovative portfolio of projects.

The studio’s origins in design for live performance led to a sustained interest in spectacle, the relationship between passive and active participation, and the use of responsive systems to create a sense of presence. As UVA’s work has broadened and evolved towards large-scale permanent works, it has become more influenced by the complex systems found in nature, while retaining its desire to emotionally engage the viewer and create a sense of communion.

With an open approach to collaboration, the members of UVA come from backgrounds in a wide variety of disciplines, and this cross-pollination of skills inspires new fields of exploration.

United Visual Artists have been commissioned by Artwise Curators, The Creators Project, La Gaite Lyrique, National Maritime Museum, Opera North, Royal Academy of Arts,Victoria & Albert Museum and YCAM Japan.

Their work has been exhibited at institutions and galleries including the South Bank Centre, the Wellcome Collection, Durham Cathedral, Riflemaker, Gazelli Art House and The British Library. Internationally UVA have shown in Barcelona, Beijing, Hong Kong, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Sao Paolo, St Petersburg, Taipei and Tokyo. Their designs for live performance have led to commissions for venues such as the Tate Modern turbine hall, the Serpentine Gallery and Madison Square Garden in New York. With public art works on permanent display in London, Bristol, Bath, Toronto and Istanbul.

Edwin Sargeant, Executive General Manager, Austube. (Speaker)

Edwin was selected to represent Australia for rowing at the World Championships in1986. That same tenacity and focus at such a young age was reflected in his pusuit for the opportunity to enter the field of creative lighting technology. In April 1994 co-founded his own company naming it ‘AUSTUBE.’ By the mid to late 90’s the Austube name became well known in the industry with the company landing some significant landmark projects such as the Plaza Pilions at the Sydney 2000 Olympic site in Homebush, the Hazlems Creek Bridge in Homebush, the RTA footbridge in Horsley Park and 6.5kms of tubular lineal lighting at the UNSW Red Wing Centre. In 2006 Austube became a publicly listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange when purchased by Lighting Corporation Limited (LCL). In 2008 The Gerard Lighting Group acquired LCL including the Austube Company. Edwin Sargeant is now the Executive General Manager EGM) of the Gerard Lighting Group’s Austube Division. As EGM Edwin continues to lead his division through the technological development of LED lighting. Late last year Austube was the first to release a true specifically engineered lineal LED thermal managed system with more reduced energy consumption. The range he aptly named ‘GreenStar’.

Florence Lam, Global Lighting Leader, Arup. (Master of Ceremonies)

After graduating from the University of Cambridge, Florence studied lighting at the Bartlett School of Architecture and has been working for Arup, an international design and business consulting firm, since.  Florence is now a Director with Arup. She is the leader of Arup’s global lighting practice, and has been responsible on a wide range of creative and well-executed projects all over the world.

Her particular interests in visual perception and natural lighting have played key roles in many of her innovative and sustainable design solution on projects, such as Tate Modern in London, Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the New Acropolis Museum in Athens and the new California Academy of Sciences Building in San Francisco with Renzo Piano, achieving the platinum rating of the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

She also has a strong interest in visual light art as a lighting designer and has worked with a number of artists/ architects in creating public art installation integrated with light. Her recent projects include Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit for the LondonOlympic, Bruce McLean’s Artist Café at Arnolfini in Bristol, Vivienne Roche’s White Light in Dublin, the World’s Largest Timepiece in Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich and the London Oasis for the London Architecture Biennale.

Florence believes in Total Architecture solution, in combining lighting creativity with the highly–skilled expertise of Arup’s engineers and environmental specialists, which has a tremendous advantage over the traditional approach to lighting design.

She has co-authored in the recent publication of the RIBA Technical Review series on Lighting and a book called Space Craft on Developments in the Architectural Computing.

Abundant food and wine and of course an outstanding exhibition of some of the world’s most exciting and progressive lighting installations. Oh and it’s a FREE event for lighting designers, architects and interior designers to attend because of our wonderful top tier global sponsor: Gerard Lighting,  as well as our other sponsors and supporters: Austube

To attend the event you must RSVP at using this link: http://eepurl.com/wXyxD

As this is a sponsored event lighting suppliers interested in attending should contact Tariq by email for sponsorship details.

Over and out.

illumni infinity awards: made with 100% pure lighting designer creativity

The post illumni infinity Awards London Presentation / Exhibition Evening.
From 7pm, 25th March 2013, At ‘The Deck’,
National Theatre, Southbank. appeared first on illumni – Lighting Design, Light Art, Lighting Jobs.

For those of you who were disappointed, (and we know that there were a few!) by Light Show at the Hayward Gallery with its big names and obvious choices, we are pleased to announce we found the antidote right here in the same city. Visiting the Kinetica Art Fair in London is a great alternative. Only two of the names were familiar to us and the rest were fresh and shiny. Best of all, you could take pictures and film, talk with the artists and even eat a sandwich as you walked round. This is art as it should be, accessible and fun…

The Art Fair is an off shoot from the Kinetica Museum, brainchild of Dianne Harris and a museum without a permanent home. Kinetica ”aims to champion artistic innovation of all kinds and to showcase ground-breaking artists to not just the regular ‘art-goer’ but to a new generation of viewers who will engage, participate and create with the art itself – a growing audience with a fascination for art that has a life of its own, one that is kinetic.”

Whilst its all pretty cool, (who wouldn’t like to sit on a swing that draws in the sand, watch scary robotic skeletons or control a puppet by dancing in front of a camera) it was the light stuff that interested us. The first cool piece as you enter is by Dutch artist Titia Ex and is a big ball of LEDs referencing Dante’s Inferno and made with the support of Philips.

Our pick of the show was the Oddity boxes by software engineers, John Popadic and Harry Denholm mainly because they were so damn cute. These adorable and tiny cubes produced a series of low res visuals that made us want one immediately.

The Roseline de Thelin piece was sublime, made entirely from very thin fibre optics cracked to create a vulnerable figure trapped in light.

There was also a good UV piece by David Ogle and a Pierrick Sorin piece made from old school record decks. We also liked the strobe lit animated story by Gregory Barsamian, impossible to explain on paper, but it made our eyes and brains hurt.

Top marks to Kinetica for displaying lighting in a dark room so that we could experience the work to the best effect. Sign up to the Kinetica newsletter so you can find out when this show might hit your town.

www.lightcollective.net
Read more from Light Collective here

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Join Martin and Sharon on March 26, 2013 4:00 pm (Amsterdam, GMT+01:00)

The word ‘Inspiration’ literally means to be “breathed upon”. Throughout the history of mankind, humans have believed that inspiration was a gift coming from the gods, the muses or the divinity itself. Inspiration is the source of all creativity and innovation in artistic endeavor and its manifestation using the medium of light is truly fitting.

Philips Lighting University in collaboration with Light Collective discusses the nature of inspiration, its importance to us and how to find it.

Join Sharon and Martin on: Tuesday, March 26th 2013

Click here to register

Webinar preview

Click here to learn more about Sharon Stammers.
Click here to learn more about Martin Lupton.

Light Collective Interview on illumni

The post Sharon Stammers and Martin Lupton Present: How Designers Find Inspiration appeared first on illumni – Lighting Design, Light Art, Lighting Jobs.

First in the doors after the opening preview night, Light Collective went to check out the Light Show at the Hayward Gallery in London’s South Bank at 10am on a windy Wednesday morning.  The predictable line up of famous names and big guns: James Turrell, Dan Flavin, Jenny Holzer, Olafur Eliasson, Leo Villareal etc was tempered by a few new names to us.  Its always exciting when a new event appears totally based around light and there’s been a lot of excitement about this one.

As always with this kind of show, a review is extremely subjective and whilst some pieces produce a head scratching ‘what the **** is that?’, other pieces elicit a genuine physical and emotional reaction. We tried to film our experience but got told off after the first two pieces by an officious security guard so hats off to Leo Villareal and David Bachelor for being the only artists that allow photography and filming of their work. The rest want to make sure that your £11 entry fee keeps some exclusivity.

The Leo Villareal installation created an intricate and interesting play of light on the walls and floor, seen in this dodgy photo with the reclaimed and re-imagined sign installation from David Batchelor.

Our top picks are as follows: The Antony McCall installation was divine, magical, ethereal and spell binding – the reaction from most visitors while were in there was a full on stop in your tracks and gasp.  The Jim Campbell 3D pixel array combined techno savvy and a good surprise.  Conrad Shawcross created a room that was a dizzying and trippy experience and the Carlos Cruz-Diez installation was mind altering and eye watering but visually fascinating. Normally known for working outdoors with large scale sunlight based installations Nancy Holt has created a beautifully clean, clever and simple installation.

The Antony McCall installation was mesmerising. Standing inside a cone of light had a sense of space and enclosure – impossible not to try and touch the light beams!

As a lighting designer, it was hard to not be really critical. Katie Patterson’s moonlight bulb was way too bright for moonlight and Ann Veronica Janssens ‘Rose’ needed a few tweaks to be perfectly focussed but we are far too anal for our own good. The public wont notice these things…

Katie Patersons MoonLight Bulb was a little to harsh for our eyes although we did like the concept and the display outside the space.

The overcritical lighting designer eye spotted the projector at 10 o’clock was a bit low but the installation was still remarkably mesmerising in its simplicity.

The show is accompanied by a series of talks and, even though our industry is woefully unrepresented, its good to see our friend and colleague Mark Major on the bill. If anyone can spread the word about light and the built environment, he’s our man! Its also good to see Bob Mizon included and we know his astronomic enthusiasm will ensure a few converts to dark sky thinking. Would have been nice to have seen a less random program of talks though and something more focussed on the topic…

The show seems to be generating a lot of publicity and a dialogue about art. What we want to hear is a dialogue about Light!

www.lightcollective.net
Read more from Light Collective here

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The LightCollector app from Philips and Light Collective is based upon two lighting design fundamentals: the desire to be inspired and the need to store the things that inspire us so we can use them when required. LightCollector is an opportunity to create a crowd sourced global image collection for the professional lighting industry sharing to aid greater knowledge, ease of working and collective creativity.

As explained by Martin Lupton and Sharon Stammers from the lighting consultancy Light Collective “We know how often we trawl our image library to find the perfect image to illustrate our concept to our client. We know that somewhere, in the depths of our not-quite-adequately filed hard drive we have that photograph we once took, in that city we once visited, of daylight transmitted through a stained glass window and creating an explosion of colour on the floor. Finding the image allows us to explain what we are trying to achieve in our design. LightCollector is a resource for collecting these light based images.”

‘’We loved the idea of an inspirational light and lighting database as a way to spark and share creativity for each design challenge. We hope to support the design community in creating better and more ground-breaking solutions harnessing light that impact people lives through this shared inspiration.’’ Matthew Cobham, responsible for lighting application at Philips Lighting.

The result is an easy to use App, which will enable lighting and design professionals to speed up their image searching requirements and to feed their creative need for inspiration. As a mobile enabled tool, it allows use of the App while on the go on both Apple and Android platforms. The App is the key to initial involvement in LightCollector but the web interface is equally important.

Visit the LightCollector website for more information.

Download the App for Android in the Google-Play store here. The App for Apple phones is available now.

www.light-collector.com

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Looking back on the last two months we undertook a variety of work and travel with projects at opposing ends of the social spectrum.

The start of December saw us pop over to Brussels to check out the Concepteurs Lumiere Sans Frontieres (or CLSF if you struggle with French like us!) with fellow Social Light Movement founder Elettra Bordonaro.  The CLSF is the lighting design version of architects or doctors without borders, professionals giving up their time and skill to help in countries that are reeling from natural disasters or war.

We joined up months ago but wanted to attend one of their meetings to understand what the group actually does.  Previously we had thought that it was a French organisation and you had to be French to join and, to be honest, we couldn’t work out what lighting designers could do in countries in desperate need.  Attending the meeting set us straight.  Recently back from a mission in Haiti, the meeting reported on the work they had achieved. Led by current President Isabelle Corten, the principal and owner of Liege based light practice Radiance 35, the CLSF had offered their professional knowledge regarding setting up a lighting infrastructure and offering micro solutions to lighting issues faced by the country.

Isabelle Corten, of CLSF, leading a lighting masterplan workshop, with Haitien architects, in Port-au-Prince.

The CLSF is working hard to translate their website and meeting minutes into English and are actively seeking to include members from other countries and they are also are open to missions being presented to them for consideration. Get involved at www.concepteurslumieresansfrontieres.org

Sticking with the social theme, we undertook a small community project in an inner city London school for Christmas as part of our ongoing contribution to The StockMKT, London’s first and only night market.

The original StockMKT cardboard shade

Our collaboration with The StockMKT began over a year ago when they asked us to help them find a funky and environmentally friendly way to light their traders stalls.  Working closely with Aether Lighting, who are based around the corner from the market in Bermondsey, we developed a fully recyclable shade for a T5 linear fluorescent lamp that included The StockMKT branding as a stencil cut out on the side.  A solution that is low energy in terms of lamp power and in terms of embodied energy!

This time we reached out into the local community and asked the children at Boutcher Primary School to bring in a lamp each from home and in anticipating of needing to plug in 200 lights, rushed out to the DIY store to buy 100s of extension leads.  We photographed each child with their own light and then the plan was to make a giant christmas tree using all the lamps together.  Surprisingly we got very few lamps but lots of LED things – a measure of lighting in the home today!   This meant we didn’t need all the extensions and could only create a mini tree as all the children took their lights home at the end of the day. Best laid plans…

A Christmas Tree made from some of the lamps brought in by the pupils of Boutcher School

We then made a film of the day and projected it on to the side of the building at the actual market night.  On the night despite a number of un-foreseen weather related hiccups (who would have thought our projection surface would turn dark brown with heavy rain!), the images were up and the kids came down to see the outdoor gallery.

At the other end of the lighting spectrum, we are just about to start work on a project in Qatar.  Very different in climate, budget and style to the lighting above!

Finally, we are pleased to report our One Beam competition closed with a total of 359 entries – thanks to everyone who made the effort, the images far exceeded even our very high expectations both in quantity and quality. We can’t wait until the final selection is ready to show everyone…watch this space to see the 30 top selections of our curation panel.

www.lightcollective.net

Read more from Light Collective here

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