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A Proclamation to the People!

The exhibition season is surely upon us and the halls are filled with glorious, sparkly doings – everything decked out in its very best energy-saving and sustainable splendour. A recent exhibition experience was so overwhelmingly positive and life-enhancing that a small groupuscle created itself out of the shimmering air, and manifested itself around a table, from the residue of lattes, cappucinos and espressos.

Made up of some of the greatest cyneasts of our industry, we immediately dedicated ourselves to a Declaration on the Importance of Good Things, which was hastily written on the back of somebody’s catalogue and signed enthusiastically by all those gathered there. And so was Cyn-Eco-Lite born.

Cyn-Eco-Lite is more than just another lighting business; you might say that it’s not a business at all, because it’s a way of Being, a way of Seeing – and it’s a route to the end of the despair and brutality that has so long blighted the human condition. And it’s all because of the LED. It’s been obvious for some time that the LED is the way to healing a very sad world. What we’ll be doing at Cyn-Eco-Lite is to accelerate that process.

Consider these constantly-stated factoids:

LEDs do no harm. Where are the lakes and mountains of spoil and waste that we would normally associate with high-tech operations? Where are the ruined water tables? There are none.

LEDs cause no suffering. Try as I may, I can find no one to admit that LED technology is causing the deaths of thousands of Far-Eastern peasant labourers.

LEDs make you happy. Happiness is the most valuable asset that we have, and LEDs actually create it. All those people walking around smiling and shaking their heads in happy bewilderment.

Here at Cyn-Eco-Lite headquarters, we are pursuing a vigorous development programme towards a state of absolute bliss through LED technology. One of our very first investigations is based on the natural riches of the earth, and we have great hopes for the success of the ‘Organo-Lite’. This LED needs only to be connected to a root vegetable to achieve amazing illumination results. We are particularly encouraged by recent work on the colour variations that have been shown by using the Maris Piper as opposed to the benchmarked King Edward. There is also a suggestion that it may be possible to daisy-chain a series of Pink Fir Apples, and that would be a truly splendid result.

Imagine the possibilities of a light source that is so intimately connected to the world around us that you need only walk out into your garden or allotment for a source of illuminating power; imagine walking amongst others, sharing your illumination merely by holding a potato in your hand.

Further, the horizontal nature of our company structure has allowed the establishment of a citrus sub-group, who have set up a test-house in southern Spain. We await their findings with barely-contained excitement. We are so happy.

I’ll tempt you with one more snippet of our work, though I really should keep this under wraps until the beta-testing has been complete. Our development cyneticists have discovered a new substrate combination that appears to generate more electricity than it actually consumes. Once we’ve sorted a few headaches with the driver circuitry we will be in a position to launch a wholly new Beyond-Zero-Carbon concept whereby the more light that you use, the more electricity you’ll produce. LED lighting will finally be able to pay for itself by feeding surplus energy back into the grid. And that – my friends – is Nobel territory.

We believe that there are many more cyneasts out there in lighting land who would be want to be a part of our journey. No, this is not just a journey – that’s too small a word. This is a Pilgrimage to the Future. For more information on the work of Cyn-Eco-Lite, please contact the writer. A range of promotional goods and replica shirts will be available later in the year.

ARC and Arctic conditions

Its nearly time for ARC and despite the critique of last year’s show, (complaints about the lack of exhibitors, the move to Earls Court, practicalities involving seminars… with the more forgiving attendees citing the snow and the first year as mitigating factors), everyone’s trying to get a slice of the action.

The IALD has its European education conference, the ILE has technical seminars and the SLL and LIF are also offering programmes of talks, even Kinetica is participating with three light art pieces – so where is PLDA this year?

Well, obviously some of our members will be milling around, some are speaking for other organisations and some of our circle of sponsors will be exhibiting, but we won’t have an official presence. This is largely because both the PLDA president and I will be doing something that I think I am going to regret.

Hold on, let me just clarify that! Martin Lupton and I won’t be visiting ARC this year because we are taking part in an extreme lighting challenge. As part of Nayan Kulkarni’s Mirrie Dancers project in the Shetland Islands, a series of remote community-led installations, we will be spending that week completing two sites for him. Lest you think this sounds easy and kinda fun, let me remind you that it will be February and thus probably below freezing. The equipment is powered by wind turbines (What? There’s not even electricity!), we will have to wear Arctic gear and I don’t very often do ‘remote’, in fact I rarely do anything other than ‘urban’.

So support and enjoy ARC – and if you are interested in our fate, follow LIGHTCOLLECTIVE on twitter to find out if I survive being that far from civilisation, how long it takes Martin and I to fall out, whether we see the Northern Lights and if (this will get me into trouble) The Wicker Man has any basis in reality…

http://www.mirriedancers.com/

http://mirriedancers.blogspot.com/

Where they won’t spend a penny

Public loos are rarely the province of the lighting designer except in the more chi-chi establishment. In fact it was a bit of a turn-up when DPA won an award for the Bullring ones a few years back. But nice though it is when someone’s had a stab at something more winning, I’d settle for one fitting over each cubicle. There are a number of criteria (which by and large we won’t go into) for selecting which cubicle we enter, but one of them is whether it has a light.

There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason in the distribution of the fittings in many public toilets (certainly very little photometric calculation), no apparent attempt even at fairness. One person will sit there basking in the full force of a 35W CFL while another languishes in the gloom of a pre-Glasnost Russian cell. (Or probably post-Glasnost come to think of it). Having established that not everyone’s allowed their own light, how do they decide? Do they sit around catapulting Blu-Tack at the ceiling to determine where the fittings will go? Or perhaps they do it on some sort of short straw/long straw system.

I appreciate that budgets often go down the toilet (or not in this case), but how much more does it cost to bung in a couple more fittings or to do the bloody maths to make sure the light is more evenly spread? They’re fond of banging on about the ‘retail experience’, but it literally goes down the pan in the average shopping centre loo.

Maybe this is a girl thing. On the various desperate occasions I have had to resort to the Gents, my general impression has been that they’re even worse than the Ladies on the grounds that boys aren’t as fussy about these things. That certainly applies to the lighting in front of the mirror. Everyone knows that women take so long in the loo because they’re not only answering calls of nature but patching up the damage wrought by too many Chardonnays or a cataclysmic love life.

According to the mirror in the average public lavatory, lurid with cold fluorescent downlighting, you’ve managed to contract a terminal illness somewhere between the bar and the bathroom. You attempt to alleviate this tubercular pallor with copious amounts of blusher and other cosmetic aids, only to emerge as Marcel Marceau.

I know it’s only a small consideration in the great scheme of things, but it’s in that category – along with changing rooms, car parks and back alleyways – of neglected areas, zones of our lives where apparently lighting doesn’t matter a stuff. The real niggle is that it wouldn’t cost that much more money or effort to make it so much better.

Mind you, the really irritating one is the uber-cool bar where they have thought about it, and decided that Stygian gloom would be fun. Black walls, mirrored surfaces and only a couple of night lights to navigate by. Stumbling about in semi-pitch blackness trying to find the door out without the aid of a wayfinding system is not my idea of a good night out.

Unqualified remarks

I cannot let Grant Daniels’ remarks about the Lighting Design Awards in the latest newsletter to the Society of Light and Lighting go unchallenged. He says the awards are “devalued by… unqualified judges”.

The last time I looked the team included Keith Bradshaw of Speirs and Major Associates, Tim Downey of Pinniger and Partners, Doug James of Mindseye and Jim Morse of Light + Design Associates. All working practitioners at the top of their game.

It also includes major client Iain Trent of Land Securities, sustainability expert Dave Tilley of DJ Consultancy, PLDA co-ordinator and former lighting designer Sharon Stammers and myself.

Oh, and we actually go out and assess the schemes. Do you know of another such competition that does this?

The innovations judging panel includes Grant’s colleague and Thorn’s lighting applications director Lou Bedocs, Sally Storey of Lighting Design International, Jake Dyson of Dyson Products, LED expert Gordon Routledge, Stan Hall of the ILE and designer and editor Carl Gardner.

Perhaps he’d like to tell us who of these he considers “unqualified”.

He says the Lighting Design Awards is also devalued by “populist hype”. This I throw up my hands to – we need to spread the message about good lighting as wide as possible.

Perhaps Grant would rather it were judged by academics, and the presentation ceremony held in a secret bunker at Balham?