Light, Art, Technology and Education

There was recently a segment on NPR about an art installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art called Levitated Mass. It’s a 340-ton boulder supported by two beams under which people can walk. When the interviewer asked the question, “Why is this art?,” the artist avoided answering the question directly. 

The truth? Art is subjective. One person’s art is another person’s rock. Is a rock light show art? Is it technology? Is it both? 

That was the subtext in the 3-day class I recently led at Chauvet Lighting in Sunrise, Florida. The class started with the fundamentals of lighting, technical things like understanding lighting metrics, how to figure out what kind of instruments you need to achieve your objectives, and what a basic lighting rig looks like. Then we spent a full day exploring art and lighting. We discussed things like color theory and how painters have been using color for hundreds of years, how Hollywood uses light and shadow, and how there are certain design principles that can be used as a starting point for lighting design.

All of this was just laying the foundation for the climax of the class, which was designing and cueing a rock show. We took one song and blocked it, identifying the intro, lyrics, choruses, bridges, and outtro, and then we split up into three groups, each of which had to program their own rig. The assignment was to program this one song and in the end we were going to play back our work in order to see what everyone had done, and critique what we saw.

Most of the people in the class had little or no experience with lighting design or programming. Two of the groups worked with a very simple controller with a simple rig so they could concentrate more on the looks, timing, and effects. Their rig consisted of two tripod stands with four SlimPAR 64 LED fixtures and two Intimidator Spot 250 LED automated moving yoke fixtures.

The third group had a more daunting challenge. They decided they were going to use a more advanced console, an Avolites Tiger Touch, even though none of them really knew how to program it. I was going to help them, but even though I have programmed and run shows on an Avolites Pearl, I had no idea whether or not the syntax was the same or even close on the Tiger Touch.

I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I’m not one to shy away from a challenge. I believe that the best way to learn is to leave your comfort zone behind and stretch yourself to your limits and beyond. Besides, the approach to programming a show is the same regardless of which console you’re using. You patch the fixtures, record palettes for positions, color, gobos, etc., then use those palettes to create scenes that you record as cues. The timing of crossfades, chases, and movement is very important but it can’t be that hard, I reasoned, to figure it out on any console.

The night before the last day of class, I had every intention of reading the Tiger Touch user manual so I could help the group using it. But the devil fools with the best laid plans, and in this case the devil was a great restaurant on the Intercoastal Waterway. I got back to the hotel too late to read the manual, so we were pretty much flying by the seat of the pants. 

At first, we had trouble just connecting the console to the lighting system in the demo room, which had a bunch of Chauvet Legend 1200 Spot and Wash fixtures, Legend 300 Spot and Wash, and various COLORado LED fixtures. But it didn’t take too long to figure out that the outputs of the console were looking for ArtNet clients and we were running straight DMX. Once we fixed that, we were up and running.

We programmed a few palettes and starting programming looks right away. This is where reading the user manual ahead of time would have really come in handy. The Tiger Touch seemed to want us to record one cue or chase per fader and use multiple faders for playback. I scanned the manual while the group was programming away, and it does tell you how to build a cue stack, but I didn’t want to kill their momentum so I let them continue. Besides, I figured there was more than one way to program and run a show and maybe this would lead to a new discovery. 

After a full day of programming, I asked each group to show their work and we played the music while they ran their show, one by one. The first group blew me away with their creativity and their impeccable timing. It turns out that one of the group, a product specialist named Nick Airries, had experience as a lighting designer/programmer. He took input from the rest of the group and programmed the console using an audio feed and very precise timing.

The second group captured favor right away by introducing their show with a poster they made that said “Show-Vay,” a play on the company name. Their show was no less spectacular. 

The third group had to play back their show manually, and they had to remember the accents and get the timing just right. To be honest, it wasn’t the best light show I’ve ever seen if you know anything about programming consoles, you will recognize their grand achievement. They started completely from scratch, learned enough about the console in an hour or two to program the song, crafted several cues, tweaked the timing, and come up with a strategy to play back the show. They were the real winners in my book because they took a big risk and their payoff was that they learned an awful lot.

In the end, I was really proud of the work everyone did. It was definitely art.