This week i worked with a group of lighting students to focus lights in the Sheila Johnson Design Center - the main public exhibition space at Parsons. The process starts with a gallery tour with the curator in order to understand the exhibition context. Students subsequently develop a lighting scheme and make all physical modifications to the track lighting system. This process takes 8-10 hours of late night, hot and dirty work. It involves carefully navigating around the exhibition works, removing and relocating luminaires, changing light sources, modifying optics, screening output, building accessory hoods and modifying control programming. It has proven to be an invaluable hands on experience - offering students a truly tangible understanding of lighting design.
It just so happens that the exhibition examines the work of Victor Papanek who was a great design thinking and educator at my alma mater, the Kansas City Art Institute, as well as the University of Kansas. Nice to have the midwestern link.
