This a great quote, nicknamed “The Shirky Principal,” attributed to Clay Shirky.
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
If lighting reps (or better yet, the actual manufacturers) simply posted lighting costs and markups openly, poof…no more reps.
If lighting manufacturers simply took money directly from…OMG…the actual customer, there would be no more need for wholesale distributors.
SEED Magazine has an interesting piece on bioluminescent organisms.
One paragraph in particular reads like Mother Nature’s version of interactive lighting control:
“Their lights have a variety of purposes: Camouflage, attracting mates, attracting (or distracting) prey have all been observed. In animals with nervous systems, in most cases, neural activity initiates the bioluminescence. But in the velvet belly lantern shark, Lynn says, researchers found that the glowing was not caused by nerve cells. Instead, it seemed, certain hormones controlled the glow: Melatonin and prolactin turned it on, and a hormone called Alpha-MSH turned it off. This makes some sense, as melatonin is activated by darkness (it helps control sleeping behavior in humans). This species of shark uses glowing as a form of camouflage.”
Jason Brooks is a London-based graphic illustrator that has done work with numerous companies across the genres of fashion, lifestyle, and interiors. Besides making me wish I was a young, rich and fabulous hipster-globe-trotting-party-animal, his illustrations are fantastic lighting inspiration: They just ooze luminosity and sparkle from every pixel.
Oh yah…time to brush up on my Photoshop/Illustrator skills!
WET Design, the designers and fabricators of the most bad-ass fountains ever, have a snazzy new full-screen Flash website that includes a new video of the Dubai Fountain.
6,600 submerged lights, 25 color projectors, hundreds of submerged robotically-controlled nozzles and enough compressed air to at once blow 22,000 gallons of water as high as 500 feet sure do make for an impressive video.
Here’s a fantastic slide show of illuminated ceilings throughout history. Modern-era projects start at about 2:30 into the video.
“The aesthetic of luminous ceilings: From the image of heaven to dynamic light.”
By Thomas Schielke, via Arch Daily.
Check out the gorgeous pieces on Lisa Foo & Su Sim’s blog page. Lisa Foo is an architect and Su Sim is a landscape architect, both from Malaysia.
Continue reading ‘LFSS: Light fixtures from recycled water bottles’
Welcome to the first post on Lucept. Lucept is being started with grand ambitions: At first, this will be a blog dedicated to contemporary lighting with a special focus on forward-looking lighting trends. Eventually, we hope Lucept will grow into something more, injecting new life into the lighting industry.
But more on that later. Let’s see how the blog shapes up first.
Lucept's Editor on a evening stroll in front of Boston's Custom House
