The house with blue eyes

Click on the link, then play and see the gallery of Licht am Bau. Especially the backlit graphic inserts in the architecture. Wow aw ow, the house with blue eyeses.

Ambigrams

This Kevin Pease guy is pretty talented.

I’m not sure if it’s a good idea, but now I want to try making ambigrams myself. He’s done some really amazing ones, go check the link for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”. And he’s got a really witty way of saying “Have a nice day”. My favourite is the White Rabbit with bunny ears.

An ambigram is a word or words lettered so as to be legible from more than one vantage point. The word “ambigrams” below, for instance, exhibits rotational symmetry; it reads the same when turned 180 degrees. Making an ambigram is a stimulating mental exercise of give and take, balancing legibility and symmetry.

Lightec lightfoils

Does anybody have experience with electroluminant lightfoils such as Lightec advertises? Seen it at a fair? Does this thing really work and how many lumens can you possibly squeeze out of this thing? Their webside refers to ca. 200 cd/m² but I guess this would be a lab situation.

They claim that “A thin and lightweight lamp. SLIMLIGHT LIGHTFOIL has a thickness of 0,8 mm. It is the thinnest lightlamp of the world. The SLIMLIGHT Multi-Kontakt-Foil is available in colours blue, bluegreen and white.” And the lifetime is promised to be 10 000 h. The sizes are either DIN A0 (and you can cut it to any size and shape yourself) or 5cmx5m lines.

I’d so love this thing in theatre use.

D for design

I think I found the web page with worst navigation ever. Ladies and gentlemen – I present you: DARK.be

Yes, their stuff is all over. Every city must have at least one café with a fixture from their catalogue But there’s this one I hadn’t seen before. Maybe it looks awful in real life. Rather that it just needs an awkward space enough around it. But looks like good design is just a step away from no design at all.

Another link to check out: http://despositogaillard.com

And the buckets of light by Disegnoluce (they also make little sacks):

As you might have guessed, I’m at D while going through the shelves of our office. Maybe I’m retarded but I find this archive work real fun.

Never fear shadows..

.. they simply mean that there’s a light somewhere nearby

(EWO slogan at the Light+Building)

Data recovery

Sometimes digital media gives you a really big scare. I just purchased 30 euros worth of photo recovery software to dig all the photos from last week from my camera claiming the flash-card to be empty. Sheesh.

Here a picture of the probably best back-lit advertisement ever, with an animated background according to the local weather.

Light+Building

Another fair over, a new one just begun. I missed the Prolight+Sound of Frankfurt this year, making all my efforts at Light+Building this weekend. A bit more of the stuff I’m currently working on.

It’s both refreshing and exhausting to figure out a totally new world – the market of architectural lighting. There are shitloads of companies doing the same thing and there are hundreds of products with only minor differences marketed by different producers. About the same as in the world of entertainment. It’s almost impossible to make a fulfilling comment on the two days I spent at the Frankfurt fair grounds.

I am yet surprised that there was nothing very special that would have caught my eye in surprise. And I don’t want to believe that I’ve seen it all already.

Nevertheless

-The LED stuff has become more and more an acceptable light source instead of simply decorative lighting. Sometimes you really need to check whether it’s LED or a fluorescent.
- Street lighting is a thing I’ve given little thought so far. But it’s a great thing if you’re into large-scale concepts and spaces. Need to give it a little more thought in the future.
- SO MANY ugly chandeliers and bling-design-faux-pas are on the market I can’t believe it (I mean, Swarowsky dudes really have a fixture called the “crystal sock” that consists of a small halogen bulb hidden among crystals hanging in a net stocking sort of a thing made of cotton)
- There are HUGE differences between a light sources, it’s good to see the shiny examples of bad lighting and low-quality lamps next to some good ones. At the architects fair you see a lot of light bulbs. It’s good to look at light bulbs. Mmbulbs

OK, there WAS a cool thing I noticed – the moving downlights by Lamp83. They’re developing a moving spot (350×90degrees) you can have recessed in the ceiling. There’s still some issues with the timing of movement (now they just go WHIZZZZ from one location to another as fast as possible) but they said it’s going to be fixed in a couple of months. A great wink for retail windows or other displays. Or small-scale theatre!

Carla from the office cooled my excitement by stating they had moving downlights in a project some 15 years ago and they’d just been forgotten meanwhile. But I still think it’s a cool thing.