On Show: The Greatest Invention of Our Time
One of the world's most vital creations is one, I think, we often take for granted. Can you guess what it is? Did a lightbulb go off in your head? Good! Because a world without electrical lighting would be a very different and dark place.
For starters, it's likely you wouldn't be reading this, because there'd be no computers. Add to that no TVs and, really, almost no electronics at all, because we wouldn't have vacuum tubes, which led to transistors. Advances in medicine and communications would more than likely have been stifled. And what sort of work would we do? It's an amazing fact, but the simple lightbulb kick-started progress and has shaped every hour of our lives.
And to think, it came into being just a little over a century ago. Since that time megaimprovements have been made. But industrial designers are still experimenting. Lighting's past achievements as well as its future innovations are the focus of Lightopia, an exhibit at the Vitra Design Museum (September 28 through March 16, 2014) in Weil Am Rhein, Germany. It will follow the current exhibit on ancient architecture, which I wrote about here. After its run at Vitra, the exhibit will travel to other museums around the world (still to be announced).
Approximately 300 works will be displayed within what we'll assume will be a very well-lit Frank Gehry building on the museum's campus. There will be films as well as interactive and walk-through installations. Lightopia will also address concerns like light pollution, energy efficiency and topical issues such as bans on incandescent bulbs.
Some of the best past designs will be shown, as well as lighting from the museum’s private collection that has never before been displayed publicly. These include pieces by a few famed designers, such as Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Gino Sarfatti and Rody Graumans. When Graumans designed 85 Lamps (pictured) in 1993 for Droog, it made quite the splash. Here was a chandelier that was stripped down to essential elements — black electrical cords, sockets and lightbulbs — artfully. Graumans' less-is-more approach was a design milestone.
Lightopia also moves beyond actual objects and shows how light defines space and creates moods, depending on what story is being told. One chilling example is the light choreography of Albert Speer. The Nazi architect manipulated light to communicate power and instill fear in his Cathedral of Lights (shown) at the Reich's rally in Nuremberg. Lights were beamed five miles up to make the leaders seem more imposing than they really were.
Much of Lightopia is dedicated to the future and innovations, prototypes and current experimentation.
5 Wild Ideas From the Exhibit
1. Dynamic architecture. This reminds me of the Hasbro game Lite-Brite but on a much bigger scale and with cooler technology. This is a rendering of a project called NIX by the firm realities:united, which is making structures dynamic. The facades communicate to the surroundings or, at least, beautify them with digitalized lights. A secondary electronic system senses the absence of humans and controls the lights accordingly. This was intended for a building in Frankfurt, Germany, but the project never came to be. It may one day appear in a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
2. Build-your-own light fixture and mood. Olafur Eliasson’s Starbrick has separate modules of "starbricks," which can be stacked or locked together to create different lighting scenarios. Here it's shown as a floor lamp. It also works as a table or pendant luminaire. With its dimming feature, light can be customized to be more direct and functional or more mood setting and ambient. The semitransparent yellow mirror surfaces in the core are backlit by LEDs.
3. It's alive! Science meets design in the Half-Life Lamp by Joris Laarman. Believe it or not, this bioluminescent lamp is powered by hamster cells injected with firefly DNA. No electricity is required, it is biodegradable, and no hamsters were harmed. If your light were a living thing like a plant, would you take better care of it?
4. The art of light, or the light of art. Colour Light, by Daniel Rybakken and Andreas Engesvik, combines light and art. Lart? The multipiece freestanding light has an opaque disk illuminated from behind by a fluorescent tube. Different-colored screens were then leaned against the circle for a multilayered effect. This light was done for Ligne Roset.
5. The ever-evolving light. No two days are alike with the Surface Tension Lamp, designed by Front for Booo. As you can see from this photo, it's simply an LED light hanging from a metal rod. Right? Not quite.
It creates its own lampshade by blowing a soap bubble around the LED light.
In the brief moment of its existence, the bubble catches the light and reflects the room, a multicolored temporary structure.
Then it bursts, and a new bubble forms. Hypnotic.
The next time I flip a switch, I know I'll be more thankful. But I feel changes afoot. Electric light, my reliable, immovable (occasionally colorful) friend, seems intent on becoming a wee bit smarter. It wants to follow me (sensors), communicate with me (dynamic architecture) and respond to my moods (changing light colors). It might even expect me to feed it, like a plant. Do you think lighting needs to improve?
Exhibit: September 28 through March 16, 2014, Vitra Design Museum, Weil Am Rhein, Germany. More info
