The Perfect Light

The Perfect Light Experience 2018

The results are in!

We would like to thank everyone who submitted a video to the Perfect Light Project. We had many entries from around the world including Mexico, Spain, USA, France, UK, Switzerland, UAE, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Argentina, India, Colombia, Sweden, Israel, Uruguay, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, Brazil and Italy…

Our judging panel watched all the submissions several times and used a scoring matrix for each one as it was very hard to pick the best entries from all the submissions.

Here are the winning three videos and the rest of the top 15:

The Project

Mount Fuji

The Perfect Light Project continues into 2018 and we are looking for people to help contribute to our ongoing research into what exactly is the Perfect Light. We have space for 3 or 4 guests to join us on a Perfect Light Experience, consisting of a 4 night trip to Japan on 4th to 8th June 2018.

Have we got your attention?
Do you think you have something to offer the discussion?

We want to select people that are passionate about light and to offer them a chance to experience, share and discuss light with us as part of our journey to find the Perfect Light. If you think you have what it takes, upload a video describing a Perfect Light Experience you have had or would like to have for a chance to be be part of the experience.

The Perfect Light Project in 2017 led us to conclude that we do not have a perfect light source yet but there are properties of light that people respond to and love that could help create a Perfect Light. We have created a trip that includes a stay in James Turrell’s House of Light (a master in the control of both natural and artificial light) and an opportunity to see one of natures most efficient light sources – the firefly – up close. It also includes a trip to Citizen HQ at Mount Fuji who will host a future tech forum.

The Experience will be captured in a short film.

The Perfect Light Project is supported by Citizen.

Brief and Rules

Street in Japan

The rules for submitting an application for the Perfect Light Experience 2018 are simple (even if there are 15 of them!)

We would like you to create a 1 minute video explaining or describing to us a Perfect Light Experience you have had or one that you would like to have in the future. Anything longer than 60 seconds will be ignored so make sure you stick to the time limit.

Use your video to show us your creativity, your passion for light, your knowledge and above all to inspire us. Our selection panel will pick the 3 or 4 that they like best.

Terms & Conditions

  1. We are open to receiving your videos from 17th March until midnight 30th April 2018 (GMT+1/BST).
  2. Only one person can submit a video, we cannot accept a team entry.
  3. Only one submission per entrant.
  4. Each entrant must currently be a practising lighting designer or light artist.
  5. You can create your video however you want – it can be film, cartoon, writing, photos etc.
  6. Your submission must be in English.
  7. Your video must contain original images/footage or content from others that you have permission to use. It must not infringe the copyright of any third party or laws.
  8. The copyright for the video remains with the entrant. However, in producing the video, each entrant grants a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual licence to the Perfect Light Project allowing full reproduction rights to use the video in an exhibition, film or any other format or publicity relating to the Perfect Light Project.
  9. The Perfect Light Project will include full details of the entrant responsible for the content with the intention of promoting the entrant.
  10. Each entrant must complete the required information fields and agree to be contacted later by Citizen or a Citizen Distributor for updated information.
  11. All entries should be submitted here. Please submit your video by uploading it to a file hosting provider and sending us the link. File hosting providers include Youtube, Vimeo, Dropbox, Facebook, Google Drive, WeTransfer, and so on.
  12. All entries will by considered by the named selection panel and the selected entrants will be notified of the result by email.
  13. The selection panels decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
  14. No responsibility can be taken for entries that are lost, delayed, corrupted, damaged, misdirected or incomplete or which cannot be delivered for any technical reason. Proof of submission will not be accepted as proof of receipt.
  15. Submission of entry will be taken to mean acceptance of these terms and conditions.

If selected, you must:

Please note:

There is no cash equivalent to the experience. Your economy return flight, transfers, your hotel and meals will be included as part of the experience.
Any costs outside of this are your own responsibility.

Uploads

Submission is now closed.

Selection Committee

Florence Lam

Florence Lam, Arup

Florence is an Arup Fellow and leads Arup’s global lighting design practice. Her particular expertise in daylight, visual perception and holistic lighting approach play a key role in many of her projects, from museums to airports, bridges to city precincts all over the world. She was responsible for delivering a range of lighting projects for the London Olympic Games 2012. Florence has a strong interest in visual light art as a lighting designer and has collaborated with a number of artists and architects on public realm projects including Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit in London, the World’s Largest Timepiece along Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich and Dongdaemun World Design Park in Seoul. Other projects of significance include the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Kings Cross Western Concourse and the British Museum World Conservation Centre in London, Abu Dhabi International Airport and the Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong.

Florence was named the Lighting Designer of the Year at the UK Lighting Design Awards in 2013. She is also the recipient of the Lighting Award from the Society of Light and Lighting in 2014.

A visit to Bornholm has impressed a heartfelt perfect light experience on me. Bornholm is a unique island on the Baltic Sea. The sky was clear blue to the east and cloudy to the West at the time I walked into an art museum of local art collection. I learnt that the architecture of this building has been crafted inside out with window openings thoughtfully positioned to recreate the manner daylight falling across each gallery space when those artists painted their works in the past. The experience was surreal – not about how close the artists captured the distinctive blue sky but the art culture legacy of Bornholm was so vividly communicated through the perfect choreography of light – connecting people, space and time.

This heartfelt perfect light experience reminded me that light is as much about ‘feeling’ as it is about ‘seeing’. A key to the creation of perfect light is not pure science but the way how the light is composed. As analogy to music, light and shadows articulate architectural volumes into sub-spaces and their interplay as well as spectral quality choreograph space with rhythm to create an emotional sense of grandeur or intimacy. Without doubt, a vital essence of the perfect light is its influence in shaping people with meaningful feeling, experience and memory for the humanity.

Nayan Kulkarni

Nayan Kulkarni, NK Projects

Nayan Kulkarni’s visual art practice is concerned with the effects and affects of cinematic imagination on human experience, personal identity and the built environment. This interest is expressed in light, sound, and video installations as well as collaborative curatorial and performance based work. Varied projects extend the scope of his work to context and place specific artworks in architecture, the public realm and landscape. His artworks deploy an extensive vocabulary grown from of an ongoing studio and research enquiry into perception and the image as a luminal phenomena. His practice has resulted in some of the most ambitious light works in the UK.

Trained in sculpture at Birmingham and then The Slade Schools of Art (1993 & 1997) Nayan is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art (Naktam: Speculative Cinematographic Movement). His research is developing new ways to understand the complex formations of experience and meaning generated by artificial light in the city. The perceptual, intellectual, ethical and technological dimensions of light as medium and idea are fundamental elements in his research.

selection-panel-Nayan-Kulkarni-experience
A light experience, 2015
It is 2am in the Vale of York, a sequence of agricultural sheds catches my attention. I pull over, turn off the engine, and for a few moments adjust to the stillness. Sound falls into the air. Alone I stand staring at these lights as if compelled to find a source that springs from the ground, from the place in which I abide. Although diffused by mist the moon can be observed directly, this light’s origin is in the fusion of hydrogen. The floodlights are also reflected and diffused by the mist, they face away, it is probably of the diode. Light trespasses into the sky from behind the sheds, it is of sodium. Retro-reflected light in the red strip of the road edge markers return light from a domestic lamp behind and fifty meters off the main road; it is also of the diode. Approaching the dead of night, the road is still and the air chill. This light is for no one.

Tapio Rosenius

Tapio Rosenius, Lighting Design Collective

TAPIO ROSENIUS is a Finnish designer, innovator, artist and an entrepreneur. He works with light as a medium for architectural collaborations, digital interventions, product innovation and art.

His work seeks to create tangible connection between artificial light, digital futures, biomimetic and the human experience.

He is currently the CEO of Skandal Technologies, a new technology start-up developing Ambient Communication systems for built environment.

He is the founder of the Lighting Design Collective a thought-leading international lighting design practice with studios in Madrid, Helsinki and London. Among his most outstanding projects with Lighting Design Collective, SILO486 in Helsinki represents a new vision of poetic digital lighting for urban icons, while the “Light Over Time” luminaire and software range represent the first digital system designed for and produced by Artemide, Milan.

He is a pioneer in the use of biomimetic lighting control in built environment and continues to develop systems, masterplans, visions and technologies related to this field.

In 2014 he co-created “Think-in-a-Tank” lighting research program taking place yearly during Helsinki Design Week and is actively involved in EU wide research programs and events.

To me perfect light is an immersive and emotional experience that connects you to your surroundings, to your memories and beyond. Right now the best way to experience perfect light is through virtual reality. There is nothing but light. You are free from bodily constrains and time becomes just another contextual element, it has no meaning anymore. I was recently exploring a new photogrammetry technique on VR and the test was done inside a virtual cathedral. Beautiful streams of natural light flooding in, incredible architecture. I was navigating through the space and suddenly started to fly! It was a shock for my brain and body which reacted pretty violently but the feeling was incredible. I was floating through the beams of light. Time stopped. I have strong real memories of that space now and the quality of light it had, yet it was all virtual. It was perfect.

Florence, Nayan and Tapio will be joined by Atsuro Ijichi of Citizen Electronics.

Questions

Drop us a line at hello@lightcollective.net if you have any questions.

© LIGHT COLLECTIVE. All rights reserved. Imprint/Impressum. cej-perfectlight@ml.citizen.co.jp