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TAVA2018 organisers search for contributors

(Estonia) – Organisers are looking for speakers, workshop heads and installation artists for the Estonian festival, taking place in October 2018.

Preparations are underway for TAVA2018 as event organisers have begun the search for speakers, workshop heads and installation artists.

One of the main events for the Estonian festival, hosted in the city of Tartu, the TAVA2018 lighting design conference, will run under the header ‘Resilient Design in a Changing World’. Held on October 25^th, the conference will offer the opportunity for designers and artists to make direct contact and exchange knowledge, experience and creative inspiration.

Curated by lighting designers Johan Moritz and Tina Wikström, organisers are seeking five designers, artists or researchers who are studying or working with light, perception and public space to add to the conference programme.

TAVA2018’s Lightpath city-scape will be curated by Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet. Working under a concept of ‘Radical Light’, Guljajeva and Canet are looking for artists’ drafts that radically re-conceptualise the city-space, with the aim to draw attention to social, space and politics-related topics.

The festival hopes to encourage artists to create new, site-specific installations that will raise awareness of social issues, while at the same time giving visitors an opportunity to experience light and space from a different perspective.

Finally, for its architectural lighting design workshops, TAVA2018 organisers are looking for professional designers who are members of the IALD. Curated by Sabine De Schutter, the goal of the workshops, running from October 20-24^th, is to provide training on the main topics in lighting design, and to give students and professional lighting designers a hands-on experience from sketching the vision to eventually building an installation.

Three selected workshop heads will have the opportunity to call forth inspiring changes in the Tartu cityscape. After dark, all workshop sites will become landmarks to visitors, demonstrating the possibilities of architectural lighting design, and the different ways in which light can change the night-time identity of a city.

The deadline for open calls is January 15^th. For more information on how to get involved, visit www.tartuvalgus.ee.

by dbell

Cooledge launches Boston Office

(USA) –The opening of new commercial offices in Boston sees Cooledge increase its presence on the American east coast.

Cooledge Lighting has launched new commercial offices in Waltham, Massachusetts, putting the company closer to the world’s largest concentration of architectural and design firms and related decision makers, and providing access to key talent and resources within the locally established solid-state lighting cluster.

The new space will house sales, product management and marketing functions, while R&D, engineering and manufacturing operations will remain at the company’s headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The newly-established East Coast presence is the latest in a series of corporate advances intended to complete the company’s transition from fast-growth startup to leader of an industry-merging category – luminous surfaces – which makes illumination integral to architecture. These integrated surfaces are increasingly being specified for projects all over the world, and closer proximity to the large design centres of the eastern U.S. and Europe will help Cooledge accelerate the pace of adoption.

“As a long-time hub for solid-state lighting and related startups, Boston is an ideal location to take our next major strides towards reinventing the industry,” said CEO William J. Sims. “We believe that luminous surfaces will transform the design-build process as we know it, and we have the vision and agility to make it happen.”

Cooledge initiated operations in its Waltham office in October and currently employs fifteen staff with plans to expand. The office will also feature a showroom to demonstrate applications of its award-winning luminous surface offerings.

www.cooledgelighting.com

by dbell

Soso create interactive coloured light installation

(USA) – Sosolimited’s Colorspace interactive sculpture responds to text messages with animations of coloured light.

Sosolimited has unveiled Colorspace, an interactive sculpture that transforms text messages into breath-taking animations of coloured light. The installation, which resides in the upper lobby at 200 Clarendon Street (formerly the Hancock Tower) in Boston, Massachusetts, was commissioned by Boston Properties, which owns and manages the building.

“We set out to create an artwork that could evolve through an ongoing conversation with the community around it. On a personal level, we wanted to create a playful and surprising moment for tenants as they entered and exited the building each day,” explained Sosolimited Co-founder John Rothenberg.

“You can literally send it any message, and it will translate your text into a unique colour palette of shimmering light. ‘Beach’ lights up the space with blues and yellows. ‘Watermelon’ gives you shades of pink and green,” added Eric Gunther, Co-founder of Sosolimited. “And ‘disco’ lights up the lobby with hot pinks and purples.”

As tenants and visitors enter the mezzanine, they pass a long wall with a wave-like row of suspended light pendants. Anybody with a mobile device can send a text message to the phone number printed on the wall. The sculpture replies with a text message and seconds later, a sparkling wash of coloured light sweeps across the length of the mezzanine, illuminating the space with new colours.

The polished marble and chrome surfaces of the modernist lobby shimmer with reflections, immersing viewers in coloured light. When no one is interacting with the sculpture, it cycles through a series of curated colour palettes, continuously changing the mood of the space.

“The mezzanine at 200 Clarendon is a transitional space that sets the tone of people’s experience as they enter and exit the building,” explained Sosolimited Designer Wes Thomas. “Throughout the design process we worked to create an experience that balanced change and excitement with calm and contemplation.”

The intention of the artwork is to create a dynamic and relevant lobby that gives tenants in the building a sense of ownership and voice in the design of their shared space.

“We’re strong supporters of the Boston arts community,” said Laura Sesody, Marketing Director at Boston Properties. “We set out to commission an artwork that could evolve and respond to the people that see it every day. We’ve been thrilled with the response to Colorspace from our tenants. They can’t stop using it.”

The installation features 70 glowing pendants, suspended along the lobby wall in a wave-like fashion, creating an immersive surface of coloured light. Made from a specially formulated acrylic manufactured by Okalux, the glass-like pendants have microscopic particles inside that catch the light when illuminated.

Each pendant can independently change colour and is controlled by custom software that performs a web-based image search for each text message, analysing the pixels of the top image and builds a visually interesting colour palette. This colour palette is translated into network messages that are sent to the custom circuit boards driving the LED lights. The LED boards were designed for Sosolimited by Mike Harrison, an engineer based in Essex, UK.

“This is the third in a series of artworks we’ve created that transforms words into big displays of colour. It provides a simple, personalised way of interacting with technology, and with a low barrier for participation. Anybody can create unique and surprising visualisations by just thinking of a word,” said Sosolimited Partner Wade Aaron.

www.sosolimited.com

by dbell

Lighting Designer launches A Beautiful Light research project

(Europe) – BPA’s Martina Frattura is leading a new study looking at the psychological relationship between beauty and light.

Architectural lighting designer Martina Frattura has launched a new research project aimed at the relationship between light and beauty.

Frattura’s study, entitled A Beautiful Light is a ‘human-centred project’ that will aims to use artificial lighting ‘in its highest potential… that will go beyond the walls of studios, offices or universities, to get closer to the people’.

The study comes about after Frattura, an assistant lighting designer at BPA, noticed a dissonance between science and design, particularly regarding the effects of light exposure on the psychological health of any user of any space.

She started to look further into psychology and neurophysiology in order to gain more of an understanding on the deeper power of light – the most powerful tool to affect daily life, outside of personal events.

And as part of her research, Frattura is asking for participants to submit their ‘emblem of beauty’. “The reason behind this is to look for a trend in the physiological response of people to beauty,” said Frattura.

“For example, a person in front of a picture of their favourite town, or a woman staring at the most beautiful item she owns. Would they react the same way? Would their brain have the same electrical activity, or their body express the same level of arousal? To be able to identify a common ground on the subjective feeling of pleasantness that could later be used for deeper restoration.”

The second stage of the research will examine the definition of characteristics, such as direction, intensity, frequency, CCT, that a light stimulus, in a certain indoor environment, should have to be able to trigger a similar physiological response. For this, participants will look at three images and run a brief fast recall test while wearing a non-invasive, lightweight EEG and GSR device.

A Beautiful Light will span across Europe, and has already been confirmed in Bulgaria, Portugal, Iceland and Turkey, and Frattura is looking for more locations and participants. For more information, email martina.frattura@gmail.com.

by dbell