dbell

The Paranormal Unicorn

There’s a new name in the lighting world that is fast gaining recognition for its innovative approach to design, and for the variety of projects that already fill its extensive portfolio. And it’s a name that sticks in the mind.

Founded in 2011 by Austrian-American art student Stefan Yazzie Herbert, The Paranormal Unicorn describes itself as an ‘audio-visual artist collective’ that specialises in stage and lighting design. Based in Vienna, Austria, the firm originally began as a platform for Herbert and two friends, carpenter Benni Frener and Philipp Gantioler to launch a prospective music career.

“We were hobby DJs who wanted a cool stage show for ourselves, so we made our very first project together: Stage One,” explained Herbert. “After quickly realising that nobody really wanted to book us as DJs but they still wanted the stage, we started renting it out to raves and festivals. As we got to know people in the industry, we were asked to do more and more commissioned work.”

Now, Herbert runs The Paranormal Unicorn with current business partner Dominik Hell-Weltzl, and over the years the company’s skill set has expanded to include video and content production. Though Herbert says that their passion is still rooted in light and stage design: “That’s where we shine – no pun intended.”

Herbert’s fascination with light began while helping out friends at design studio Neon Golden on an installation at Viennese club ‘Grelle Forelle’ during his studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. “During that project they taught me how to solder, how dimmers work and gave me a rough understanding of electronics,” he said.

“Later, after the success of Stage One, people started to know me as ‘the LED guy’, so lights and projects associated with light seemed to follow me. The more I worked with the medium, the more I fell in love with it.

“I had previously done quite a bit of work as a VJ but once I started working with LEDs, my passion for projected light fell by the wayside. The intensity and emotion of emitted light was much more powerful to me than what projected light could ever give.”

Since the inception of The Paranormal Unicorn, Herbert has been very open about his relative lack of experience in the lighting world, but he’s always keen to improve his knowledge through working with others. While this approach brings with it an element of risk, Herbert believes that such risk is the only way to truly reach the next level.

“Every time anybody wants to do something never done before, it’s a risky move,” he said. “And besides, if I knew exactly how to do everything already, life would be boring. Every new project is a learning experience – at least, the fun ones are – and for several of the more complicated projects I’ve worked on, I don’t think there’s anybody in the world who would have known exactly how to handle it.

“Throughout my career I’ve taken on projects that others perhaps wouldn’t have. It’s scary doing something bigger or more complicated than you’ve ever worked on before, but if it takes you to the next level, it’s almost always worth it. Sure, it’s risky and I’ve taken a black eye or two when I’ve underestimated the breadth of the project, but if I could do it all again, I would still rather take the black eye than turn down an amazing opportunity.”

Herbert’s notion that you “don’t need to be an expert in order to make things happen” is a refreshing approach, but he feels that by accepting your own limitations, it allows you to develop your skills and progress further.

“Embracing your own ignorance gives you the power to find people who are better than you in that specific field, and that improves the quality of a project,” he explained. “I constantly try to surround myself with smarter and more experienced people. Knowing the extent of your own skills is paramount. If you overestimate yourself, the project will ultimately always suffer from it.”

Indeed this collaborative element of his work is something that Herbert wants to see more of in the lighting world. “I hope to see more collaboration between fields,” he said. “As a society we are tending more towards specialisation but in my opinion, the most fascinating innovations are happening where multiple areas of expertise overlap.

“All of the technological inventions that are currently being hyped, like smart lighting and wireless technology aren’t really changing the aesthetics of lighting that much. Interconnectivity between people is more important than between devices.”

While The Paranormal Unicorn has often taken on jobs without knowing how to complete them, Herbert believes that this constant drive to find new projects in new areas helps make them unique. “What really makes our company stand out is that we aren’t afraid to try out new things, and really enjoy working in new fields,” he said.

“We’ve forayed into unknown territory so often at this point that we’ve become quite good at learning new workflows and interfacing with new teams. We never shy away from a challenge, and we’re always excited to see what’s going to come next.”

By venturing into the unknown throughout their tenure, The Paranormal Unicorn has landed a number of really fascinating projects, including light art installations, music video productions and stage designs for festivals and touring musicians. There are two projects though that, for Herbert at least, stand out among the others: “From an artistic standpoint, Hidden Noise is by far my favourite project that I’ve created, and Gravitas was the most fun from a teamwork perspective because it involved so many different fields of expertise.”

The Hidden Noise project, created in 2014, was one born out of necessity for Herbert. A failing university student, his professors had voted to kick him off his course, but after being granted one last chance, he needed a good idea to keep him in school.

Luckily, inspiration came to him during a workshop with Christina Kubisch, where he was given ‘electro-magnetic transducer headphones’ to work with. These devices could sense the environment for anything that used electro-magnetic waves (Wi-Fi, motors, lights, etc.) and convert those waves into audio signals. It was here where inspiration struck.

“My classmate David Osthoff and I loved this idea of an entirely new world that was constantly around us but that we couldn’t see,” Herbert said. “We wanted to visualise it in a way that immediately made sense to the viewer. So we created a technique using the transducer, an LED stick, a photo camera and a video camera that made it possible to ‘show’ this hidden world by visualising these audio waves.

“All of a sudden, you could see the hidden processes around us in plain sight. Subways starting and stopping, car motors zipping by, power lines humming all became suddenly visible. There is no judgement in the art piece, though it is intended to cause awareness about the ubiquity of this hidden noise around us.”

Hidden Noise is a remarkable, visually stunning art installation, and since its creation, it has been exhibited in Austria, China and Cuba. The reception it received meant that Herbert was ultimately not kicked out of university, although he revealed that he did later drop out anyway.

Herbert’s second favourite project, Gravitas, was something altogether much more high-octane. Following their work with Austrian drum and bass artists Camo & Krooked on their 2014 Zeitgeist European tour, in which The Paranormal Unicorn created a full-scale festival production for the show, including integrating its Möbius stage element, Herbert teamed up with the musicians, and the Red Bull Skydive team, for a very special music video that literally lit up the sky.

For the music video, The Paranormal Unicorn was approached by Red Bull to create a portable lighting system that had all the functionality needed for a full-colour, synchronised light show, while simultaneously being able to stand the wear-and-tear of skydiving.

“It was a perfect project for me because it encompassed so many different fields,” explained Herbert. “First off was the choreography. Because the Red Bull Skydiving team didn’t know anything about light, and I didn’t know anything about skydiving, we had to work together to develop a choreography that utilised the best of both worlds.”

After receiving the song to base the programming on, The Paranormal Unicorn worked closely with the skydiving team in order to come up with an interesting show that would showcase both their abilities as athletes and realise the full potential of the lighting system that they had created.

The technical aspect of the project provided the most difficult challenge though. Building a system that worked perfectly from a 4,000-metre jump all the way to the floor was no easy feat, thanks to a myriad of factors that they never had to consider before, like pressure, altitude and temperature. Alongside this, everything had to be wireless, and work with small batteries so that the enclosure for electronics weighed as little as possible.

After climbing to the required height, the jumpers synchronised their suits in the plane via remote control. All jumpers had earplugs so that they could stay synchronised and maintain awareness of what part of the choreography they were in.

Once the signal was given, the four athletes jumped out of the plane, followed by the cameraman, who had a 5kg camera attached to his head. The jumpers went through their choreography and then landed on an LED landing strip, also prepared by The Paranormal Unicorn. Because several angles were used in the video, the scene was repeated five times in total. “The weather didn’t always agree with us and we had to cancel a few jumps, but through thick and thin, we pulled through,” Herbert said.

“For me, what really made this project so much fun was the creative reign that I was given by Red Bull. They let me film, edit and direct the final video as well. We partnered with our friends at Frame Fatale for the post-production process and created something that we could all be proud of.

“Having knowledge about all of the different aspects involved in making a project like this is what made it work in the end. It’s projects like these that make me want to keep learning and innovating.”

The work that Herbert has done with The Paranormal Unicorn means that he could be classed as a ‘Light Artist’, rather than a lighting designer. However, while art and design are closely related, if he had to put a label on it at all, he seems himself as more of a designer.

“I have definitely created art in the past and continue to do so on occasion, but most of my creations are firmly in the realm of design,” he said. “But the label I give myself depends on the work I am currently doing. Sometimes I am a lighting designer, sometimes I’m a light artist, but I have donned the mantel of lighting technician, creative director, technical project manager and even lighting consultant.”

Whatever his title, Herbert is keen to take The Paranormal Unicorn further in the future, and while his profile has been boosted over the past twelve months, from speaking at the inaugural Trends in Lighting event, to hosting his own talk at TEDx Dornbirn, in which he designed his own stage, he’s still unsure what the future holds.

“I wish I knew! This year we’ve already had amazing opportunities to start working in a few new industries, from set design to product development,” he said.

“What is more fascinating to me though is the unknown. There are so many industries that are a complete mystery to me and I imagine that the next few years will be doing our best to see what industries could benefit from using light in crazy and innovative new ways.”

Indeed this quest for innovation is a driving factor for Herbert, who gets fairly philosophical on the subject: “I really believe in true innovation, completely new fields of thinking,” he said. “I want to use technology in order to create new ideas, try out things never done before, and to do it beautifully, aesthetically. If I can come up with one truly new idea before I die, in the world of lighting or otherwise, I can die in peace.”

But aside from his approach to lighting design, and what the future holds for The Paranormal Unicorn, there’s only really one question left to ask: where does the name come from?

“The Paranormal Unicorn doesn’t really mean anything, and none of us can really remember how it came about,” Herbert said, “but it does represent us quite well. It’s childish, fanciful and fun.

“We don’t take ourselves too seriously and we hope nobody else does either!”

www.theparanormalunicorn.com

---

by dbell

Martin Klaasen

Words: Robert Such

Throughout his long and distinguished career, lighting designer Martin Klaasen has been involved in a long list of iconic projects in Asia and Australia as well as being at the forefront of lighting education in the region.

In the lighting business for almost 40 years, Martin Klaasen, Principal at Klaasen Lighting Design (KLD), traces his ability to manage the ups and downs of his career to the influence of a number of people. Making the top of the list though is his grandmother: Geneviève Dreyfus-Sée. An architect in France, as well as a writer and educator, she has been Klaasen’s biggest inspiration.

“What I most admired in her,” says Klaasen, “was her perseverance, belief in herself and her independence. She did not care what people thought of her, whether she was successful or not. She studied and wrote about the history of architecture because she was passionate about it. She wrote about her experiences bringing up her children during the war, wrote children’s books to share the stories she taught her children, because she believed in it and just wanted to share it.”

And over the past 26 years as his own boss, Klaasen’s own “persistence and belief have always kept me going,” he says. And passion, too. “While I was passionate creating beautiful lighting projects at the beginning of my career, I am now passionate about sharing my knowledge with the new generation,” he says. It is this passion that motivates Klaasen to blog, write articles, and speak at lighting event seminars about “how lighting can be used to improve and look after the world we live in,” he says.

His own contribution to doing that is made through projects mostly in the area of hospitality, commercial, corporate and public building lighting and residential urban developments. “Good lighting design contributes to more comfortable and pleasant environments, easier way-finding, and beautification of the cities we live in,” he says. “Most of all it is the way we achieve it through our sustainable approach, minimising energy consumption, capital and operational costs. Added value creation through good lighting design.”

Over the years, other people have influenced the direction of the award-winning lighting designer’s life and career, too. “Of course I do admire groundbreakers like Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Philippe Starck,” he says, “but they are not the essential motivators in my life.” 

Gerrit van den Beld was, however, such a person. Van den Beld was his boss and mentor at Philips. He taught Klaasen how to pace himself and “how to take things one at a time, sleep on problems rather than react emotionally,” he says. “He was instrumental in forming my lighting design personality.”

Klaasen worked at Philips after graduating with a master’s degree in Industrial Design from the Technische Hogeschool in Delft in The Netherlands. “As I like building and creating things,” he says, “I settled on industrial product design…Industrial design teaches you the process of design, from concept to realisation and till today it has been the foundation of my successful career.”

When Klaasen finished his studies he started to look for a job at Philips, where he had completed his final master’s degree project, which was “designing an intelligent washing machine that could read the laundry and decide the washing program by itself,” he says.

Among the job opportunities on offer to him was one of lighting designer at the Philips Lighting Design and Engineering Centre in Eindhoven.

“I was immediately fascinated by this group of people,” he says, “designing the lighting for Olympic Games, big commercial hotel developments and so much more. I decided there and then on the spot to take this exciting job and never looked back.”

Also making Klaasen’s list of people that have had the greatest influence on his lighting career is American businessman and author Robert Kiyosaki. “He gave me insight on becoming more business savvy,” says Klaasen. “Good designers are not necessarily good business people and I certainly was not when I started my business.”

Klaasen started his own business in 1991, after moving to Singapore in the late 1980s for Philips, who had tasked him to “set up what at the time was called the Support Centre for Professional Lighting in Singapore,” he says.

Experiences and events that eventually motivated Klaasen to leave Philips were an uncertain future at the company and meeting lighting designers Tony Corbett of Anthony Corbett Associates and BAA’s Barry Arnold.

It was only when Klaasen arrived in Singapore and met Tony Corbett did he realise “there was such a thing like an independent lighting designer,” he says. “Inside my protected corporate Philips cocoon, I basically only knew of Philips product and was limited to using their products to design anyhow.”

By 1990 Klaasen’s job future at Philips was uncertain as the company “was going through severe restructuring,” he says. At that time, though, American lighting designer Barry Arnold asked Klaasen whether he was interested in joining him. Intrigued, and because he had been thinking about starting his own practice due to his uncertain future with Philips, he decided to leave the company. However, not to work as an employee of Barry Arnold, but “in a cooperation with my own company [Lumino Design International] which I incorporated for that purpose,” he says.

Things didn’t work out though. Conflicting ideas about how they would be working together meant that Klaasen left shortly after.

Working from home, a few projects that Philips had passed on to him, such as the Sheraton Senggigi Resort in Lombok and the Melia Purosani Hotel in Yogyakarta in Indonesia, and The Raffles Hotel in Singapore, which was in its final stages, kept him going for the first few months.

The company expanded through the 1990s, but the financial crisis in the latter part of the decade drove Klaasen to set up in Perth, Australia, where he bought a stake in a local firm, Lighting Images, eventually taking it over in 2000.

Lighting projects in Perth included the Burswood International Casino’s Main Entrance and Gaming Hall, and the Riverside Drive and Foreshore along the Swan River. Both projects won later IES Australia and New Zealand Lighting Awards.

In 2010 Klaasen decided to sell his stake in Lighting Images—“I could no longer identify myself with the direction we were going, quantity over quality of design, so I wanted to regain full control about the artistic and creative quality of our work towards our client,” he says—and rebranded himself as Klaasen Lighting Design, opening for business at the start of 2011.

Since then KLD’s lighting design work has included the Mandarin Oriental Majapahit Hotel Surabaya; the Eastern & Oriental Hotel Penang in Malaysia; His Majesty’s Theatre in Perth; the Atlas Bar at Parkview Square Singapore, and the recently completed Alila Yangshuo Hotel and Resort project in China.

Having been in the lighting business for so long now means that “lighting has gradually become an integral part of my life,” says Klaasen. “I live and breathe lighting and lighting design now. It is a constant in my life. Certainly, as a business owner you need to have a constant eye out for opportunities, to be alert to trends and technology advances, look and learn from what others are doing. This is not a nine-to-five activity. It is a permanent and continuous part of life. We learn from others, good and bad. Over time you learn to appreciate what others do or learn from what they failed to do. It motivates and inspires me to do better.”

www.kldesign.co

---

by dbell

Paul Traynor

arc talks to lighting designer Paul Traynor, principal of London-based Light Bureau which has just merged with Scandinavian lighting design consultancy, ÅF Lighting.

How did you get into lighting design?

During an apprenticeship in the project design office for Pfizer in Kent I was working at a drawing board draughting record plans of a project I helped to install. It was the first environment I’d been exposed to where people were trained and educated professionals and I saw there was another future open to me. It made me realise I could pursue formal education if I wanted and I applied to Medway College of Design to do a photography diploma. The course was full and I was told to apply next year, so I moved to London and traded on my draughtsman’s skills, working for good money in construction firms. I developed design skills and it was a really interesting time, so I didn’t re-apply to Medway. I was then recruited above my skill level in a consulting engineering practice and then I got to experiment in lighting and I was hooked. I went to work in an architect-led multidisciplinary office to focus on and develop my specialism and decided to get a decent qualification, so I studied for a four year part-time degree at South Bank University.

When and how did you start Light Bureau?

In 1998 I was due to get married and as I worked in the same firm as my fiancée, I chose to leave and to see how I could cut it in a dedicated lighting firm instead of being a specialist in a generalist office. I had some good options but only one company talked to me about career development and I went there, but it was design and supply so I had new barriers to working with some clients and architects and that frustrated me. I couldn’t see any point warming up contacts at the firms I had spoken to ten months previously, they still wouldn’t be talking to me about long term opportunities, so I decided to chance it myself. All of the projects I was working on were clients I had brought myself and I was promised more if I took the big step of self-employment. My first day in February 1999 I started work on Accenture’s new headquarters in London - not bad for a fledgling one man band!

Name some of your memorable projects. Why do they resonate?

Apple Computer, Stockley Park because that’s where I negotiated out of a bad design solution that the architect was insisting on to a better one I could foresee. It was difficult and stressful but the result was better than I had imagined and the architect and client were very happy. Until they told me I had been right it never occurred to me what the implications would have been if I had been wrong! Boots the Chemist at Bluewater on the other hand was a disaster - I was not so experienced in retail and I underestimated how much ambient and nuisance light would reduce the visual impact of a feature wall I designed. A more recent notable project would be the Yellow Pavilion, which was ephemeral but which embodies key principles that Light Bureau upholds - it’s simple, visually strong, uses very few products and they are discrete, and throughout the whole process we validated and curated. As we say, Light as Craft.

How did the ÅF Lighting deal come about?

My good friend Kai Piippo and I started our companies about the same time and we met in Prague on an early ELDA AGM and bonded on an intensive ‘cultural’ weekend. Since then we’ve compared stresses and problems, which is common with people who start a design firm with no aptitude (or desire) in running a business. I was shocked when Kai sold to ÅF but every time I saw him after that he was looking increasingly relaxed and fulfilled - he was working on great projects and getting them done because he had the support and structure that our businesses tend to lack, led as they are by designers, not by business people. When ÅF decided to step outside Scandinavia and go international, they put the pin in London and Kai made an intro. Nineteen years after starting Light Bureau I was ready to become part of something significant and all of my colleagues saw even more benefits than I did, so it’s been a unanimous and inclusive process.

How do you think being part of ÅF will benefit both companies?

ÅF wanted to become truly international, although they had a lot of that happening already. Light Bureau has always done a significant amount of overseas projects so that was a good fit. With ÅF, Light Bureau gets access to some incredible specialisms and some substantial resources; we’ve missed opportunities in the past by lacking some areas of expertise or reference projects and now we have access to more than 100 designers and a massive and impressive portfolio. ÅF really value the quality of Light Bureau projects and how we work, there are some really good synergies and from signing the contract in October it’s been positive and very big-picture. The enthusiasm and drive are very infectious qualities.

Will your role be changing?

I will continue to run Light Bureau and we will carry on trading under this name, as it seems to have significant meaning and value. We’ve spent a long time building our brand and reputation. I make no secret of the fact I am under contract for three years during which time I’ll earn-out, but after that I fully expect to stay on and negotiate a new contract and continue. But as part of ÅF the remit expands and I am part of the advisory board as it’s called and will work on strategies for developing the profile and business for the whole of ÅF Lighting, not just Light Bureau, also on training and education for our designers - we are developing our own ÅF Academy, which really motivates me.

Do you think mergers of lighting design practices is something we’ll see more of?

Yes, I think so. Lighting has become a very interesting aspect of construction design and bigger firms who previously only focused on their core activities of, typically, consulting engineering and architecture now see the real value that a well-realised lighting deign can bring to a project. It brings prestige to such a company and they want to be able to provide this service as part of their overall business offer. Lighting design does suit a small business profile and is scalable, from one person at a kitchen table, but when you hit double digit designer numbers and into the teens, there’s usually a lack of structure that makes up-scaling difficult. So I think that mergers and acquisitions like this could become more common.

www.lightbureau.com

---

by dbell