Big LEDs — Professor Aaron Parsekian

Lighting Analysis

Border Tuner - Lozano-Hemmer

Border tuner is a participatory light installation composed of several beams of light which intersect above the USA Mexico Border. Each individual light beam is user controllable via a steering wheel. When users across the border connect, a microphone speaker system connects them.

https://www.lozano-hemmer.com/border_tuner__sintonizador_fronterizo.php

https://www.bordertuner.net/home

Analyzing this piece using the stage lighting framework, lets start with the Goals.

Selective Visibility: The lighting (in the form of casted beams) has "two sides" one side is on the ground, the other disappears into space. The visibility then, is drawn to the tangible side, that of people on the ground. Crucially, the primary user, and so viewer is situated at the base of their own beam, leading to a transference across the light bridge to imagining the unseen other whose voice is transmitted upon a successful connection.

Mood: The light beam is bright, neutral, and clear. I say neutral because its not particularly warm or cool. It looks sort of otherworldly. The beam gestures towards search lights. I feel the mood of the light is "magical" or "godly"

Composition: The light is a BEAM. There are though, several beams. And so the sky is crisscrossed by them as a network. The beam of light seperates itself from the dark sky background.

Revelation of Form: As the light is the object into itself, its form is revealed by its casting across space.

I can see how these all tie into the four properties of stage lighting.

Color: Clear white

Intensity: At the higher end of what is possible

Form: beam

Movement: Light itself is stable, but its movement across space is dynamically controlled by the user participant.

I should have analyzed the propertied before the goals. In becoming clear with the properties of the light, I would have been better able to make informed opinions about the goals.