It was with great pride that Rachel and I stood beside the Premier of Victoria John Brumby, Minister for Major Projects Tim Pallas and Sue Nattrass AO for the launch of the LED lighting scheme for AAMI Park, designed by Electrolight.
The project represents the culmination of more than 2 year’s work from the time that Electrolight won the competition to design an artistic feature lighting scheme for the stadium. Such a scheme has not been realised in Australia before - we believe it is actually a world first in stadium design.
About the scheme: there are 1544 LED fixtures, one attached to each of the ‘nodes’ that comprise the facade design. Each fixture contains red, green and blue LED lamps which are themselves individually controlled by a central system in a similar manner to that of a TV screen. The thing that makes this project so special is that it is infinitely adaptable, a blank canvas for whatever content can be dreamed.
For the opening, the content (the actual light show programmed onto the LEDs) was designed by Alexander Knox (with input from Bruce Ramus). The content will regularly change - for example a specifically designed light show will play when Melbourne Victory are playing, another for the Storm etc.
And does it look any good? We think so - check it out…
So many people to thank - the wonderful, talented team at Electrolight led by Rachel Burke, John Ford, MPV, Bruce Ramus, Joe Casamento from Lightmoves, Grocon, Bruce Myles, MOPT and Sue Nattrass for having the vision to choose our scheme at competition stage.
My life as leader of Hardware Lane’s most influential lighting design practice can be pretty exciting at times. I get to meet some wonderful people and see some fantastic things.
Last weekend I spent a few hours up at Northland Shopping Centre in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. A visit to the cinema (the new Thomas the Tank Engine film) was followed by some time at the kids play area. Coincidentally (unless you are cynically-minded), this is where the fast food outlets are located and I found myself checking out the lighting to the Lord of the Fries restaurant. And therein found proof of a lesson in light which I will share today: it doesn’t matter how much light you put into a space with a black ceiling, walls and floor; it’s always going to look dark. There were dozens of high-powered fluoros cranked up to the max and the place hardly looked open. Don’t get me wrong - I’m sure the fries are delicious but the interior was, well, a bit of a mouse-hole.
I caught up with an interesting young man yesterday called Nils Porrmann from Dandelion and Burdock who was in Melbourne visiting from London. Nils was telling me about a light festival near his home town in Germany which sounded very cool - and here’s the link
From the website blurb: Licht RUHR.2010 shows outstanding existing light works as well as light projects that were created especially for the European capital of culture and will mark the metropolis Ruhr on Europe’s map of light for a long time.
LIGHT was and is a decisive factor in the transformation process from the old industrial Ruhr region to the modern metropolis Ruhr. Prominent artists and designers used the technical possibilities of light to create signs of change, often visible from afar, in this metropolis with its versatile town and country spaces.
Wanna get over and check it out? Too late but never mind because you can see all the good stuff by clicking here
Joseph Kosuth, Sechs Teile, Lokalisiert, 2004 - copyright, for exclusively editorial purposes in connection with the Biennale für Internationale Lichtkunst
On Friday I had the pleasure of attending the opening of the Bendigo Chinese Precinct. And, despite the cold, it was quite an event with amazing dancers, costumes and of course fire-crackers galore.
This project has been very collaborative - we have worked very closely with landscape architect Rush Wright Associates, council and other consultants to produce a lighting scheme which, we hope, does justice to the project. Of course, this never happens in isolation and we acknowledge the contribution of others who helped us to realise our scheme.
On the day there must have been 200 people braving the weather to celebrate the opening. And I have to say it was looking fantastic.
This the latest in a series of projects Electrolight has undertaken in Bendigo. Previously, we did the lighting design to Hargraves Mall, Capital Theatre facade and cafe and Bendigo Town Hall council chamber for which we designed a custom chandelier. The common thread running through these projects is one of our most loyal clients Mr Don Goldsworthy from the City of Greater Bendigo whose support is very much appreciated.
For reasons beyond me, there often seems to be an inordinate amount of time between dreaming up a lighting scheme and seeing it installed. Case in point is Duck Duck Goose a new restaurant in the QV Centre in Melbourne. It must be three years since we did the design for this project and I must admit that I thought for a while that the design was going to end up on the drawing board in the sky. But lo and behold, the jobs complete, looking great and trading well.
We had a well deserved team lunch there last week to celebrate!
We are all nuts about light here at Electrolight, but to my knowledge nobody in our team has bought an 1100 acre volcano site to carry our light experiments.
That sort of caper is best left to the likes of James Turrell. For the uninitiated, James Turrell is an internationally renowned artist who is obsessed with the exploration of light in art. James is in Canberra next week to talk about his Roden Crater project and to launch a new installation at the National Gallery called Skyspaces.
According the gallery website ‘Turrell’s aim is to make environments that enhance natural light and dark in such a way that you question the source of the light and your perceptions of what you are seeing. Skyspaces are simple, elegant viewing chambers that frame the sky as pure colour and show us ‘the changing light of the sky, altering what we see with our own eyes’. Skyspaces position us in the moment and reconnect us to the world we inhabit’.
As Turrell explains, ‘we are dwellers at the bottom of the ocean of air. We create the colour and shape of the sky. It does not exist outside the self’. Roden Crater is one of the largest and most audacious works of art in the world. In 1979 Turrell bought an 1100 acre site containing a volcano and began to develop the site as the ultimate Skyspace. Turrell’s vision is to create a number of chambers within the volcano where visitors will experience the sight of the sun and moon, and rare celestial alignments.
Have you ever wondered what happened to the mercury that lives inside your fluorescent lamp at the end of its life? If you are like the vast majority of people it ends up in a landfill site (a nice way of saying rubbish dump).
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can affect the brain, liver and kidneys, and cause developmental disorders in children. Young children and developing fetuses are especially at risk. Mercury is found in a variety of products, such as fluorescent and other lights, batteries, electrical switches and relays, barometers, and thermometers. The mercury contained in these products can evaporate into the air or leach into the groundwater from the landfills.
Thankfully, at last someone is doing something about it. The Lighting Council of Australia is administering a scheme called FluoroCycle where lamps containing mercury can be recycled. For more information on everything you ever wanted to know about recycling fluorescent lamps check out the fact sheet.
We are looking to further strengthen our team and are currently looking for a designer/technician. The successful applicant will have strong skills in AutoCAD as well as a solid capabilities in Adobe CS suite. Experience with AGI 32 would be useful but not essential. The most important attribute of all is a love of light and a genuine desire to do amazing things with it.
To apply send a CV and letter to Samantha Webb, samantha@electrolight.com.au
I don’t know about where you live but I can say that where I live in the City of Darebin it’s dark. And I mean real dark, man.
The reason for this is that the street lighting is worse than bad. The lighting would have been bad at the time it was installed - 80W mercury vapour lamps attached to the overhead power lines - a ghostly white light with bad colour rendering. But I’m tipping these lights have been installed for 20 years without being relamped. A charachteristic of the mercury vapour lamp is that they don’t die they just fade dimmer and dimmer with time. In my street I reckon the lights emit about 5% of the original light output while the power consumed stays the same which makes them incredibly inefficient. Add the environmental imact of disposing of these lamps (they contain high levels of mercury) when they eventually are replaced and you can see that it’s not a great situation.
But perhaps things are going to change. I came across this website this week which is trying to do something about it.
You’ve made the switch to energy-efficient globes at home, now help us make the switch in your street by signing our online petition. It only takes a minute.
Replacing old street lights with new energy efficient technology would save significant greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to more than 340,000 cars off the road for a year.
I have done the sums. I think that we can replace all of the existing mercury vapour fittings and replace them with compact fluorescent alternatives. We would get really good colour rendering and much improved lit environments making us feel safer all for a fraction of the cost and carbon footprint of the existing arrangement.
Please join me in signing up to support this fantastic initiative.
It is my sincere pleasure to announce some big news at Electrolight - that Ben Luder has joined the firm in the position of Associate. Ben has enjoyed a very successful career most recently at Vision Design where he was instrumental in some of their most prestigious projects. These included his role as principal designer for the Supreme Courts of Melbourne, a project which was awarded Australia’s highest lighting design award, the IES International Award of Excellence. Ben will strengthen our team and we look forward to some exciting collaborations with him.
