A LOOK BACK AT THE OCT. 2009 EVENT
Date: October 13-15, 2009.
Location: Chicago, Illinois
The Merchandise Mart, Chicago
Art vs. Science: They Don’t have to Be Mutually Exclusive
By Maggie Koerth-Baker, Contributng Writer
ArchLED convened yet again, this past fall, but this year was all about looking at SSL through both sides of the brain, and getting down to brass tacks.
The first ArchLED conference, in 2008, brought lighting designers, specifiers, LED and fixture manufacturers and building owners together in an unprecedented way—allowing the disparate groups to finally communicate with each other about what they had in common: LED lighting. The 2008 conference painted in broad strokes, catching all parties up on the state of the LED union and giving everyone a chance to get honest about the big questions: What are the problems of LED lighting, where is it working best, what's being done about standardization and what's coming in the future.
ArchLED 2009 built on that foundation, filling in the details of 2008's big picture. The theme was Art vs. Science. The goal: Give participants the nitty-gritty insight that would help them better understand the inner workings of LEDs and how to use all that physics and engineering to create aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly environments.
It's a worthy pursuit, but not nearly as easy as it sounds, said Kevin Willmorth, principal of the Germantown, Wisc. consulting firm Lumenique. The trouble, Willmorth explained in his Day One plenary on the SSL Year in Review, is that, when it comes to SSL, we all have the tendency to put art and science into separate little boxes and refuse to let them touch. But that approach always does more harm than good.
"We had no problem putting 15 people on every science panel. But we struggled coming up with the art side because it's difficult to articulate the feelings and emotions that make up art," he admitted. "But that doesn't reflect the relative importance of art vs. science. You can make something that meets any number of objective criteria and saves tons of energy. But you can't force people to like it. The end result is this: If it's a substandard space for humans, then the science has failed too. Electronics and design need to share more perspective on mutual concerns."
If SSL is going to live up to its potential, Willmorth told the crowd, the science side can't get all the food while the art side starves. Important technological research, like the efforts to improve lumens-per-watt, can't shove equally important innovations in new types of applications onto the back burner.
Throughout the three days of ArchLED 2009, speakers and presenters tried to navigate that delicate balance. Besides Willmorth, the first day saw a keynote by Mike Picini, vice president of SSL at Lisle, Ill-based Molex. Picini, as a new entrant to the world of SSL, was able to bring an outsider's perspective to both the problems of art and science. In the afternoon, designers Dane Sanders, Clanton & Assocs., Boulder, Colo., and Avraham Mor, Lightswitch Architectural, Chicago, took the stage to talk about lighting design in the real world. Their presentation focused on case studies that demonstrated the successes, and failures, that could happen when SSL technology met a designer's vision. The two speakers also dove headfirst into an issue that had come up repeatedly at the 2008 ArchLED conference: How can designers tell the good manufacturers from the bad. The secret, according to Sanders and Mor, is to focus on the credibility of the company—its track record with past clients and projects, the length of its warrantee, the honesty of its sales staff. Trying to learn all the science, and stay up-to-date on it, enough to judge manufacturers based on their technology will only bog most designers down. Finally, a panel of manufacturers and science experts talked about the differences between standards and standardization, and where SSL technology stood when it came to both.
Day Two pushed art and science even closer. The keynote featured Jim Campbell, a former Silicon Valley engineer who became a video artist. His primary medium is light and LEDs figure heavily into his work. The San Francisco-based Campbell talked about how he has used LEDs to create interactive light installations that play with neurobiology, asking how pixelated an image can get before the human brain can no longer understand the information the image is trying to convey. He was followed by Bruce Yarnell, principal of Yarnell Assocs. Lighting Design, Kansas City, who talked about the need for art. Self-expression and making a statement aren't just things we want, he told the crowd, they're things that human nature demands. SSL technology is exciting, in this context, because of the way it allows people to make statements and express themselves in ways that were never possible before.
After two presentations that combined art and science, the rest of Day Two was evenly split. Two sessions looked at lighting design case studies. The first focused on designing with RGB light, and how designers can make color work, without making it gaudy. The second zeroed in on white light, and gave two designers' perspectives on how to get the right look, in the right places, with this still tricky technology. The science perspective came from the keynote speech, delivered by Jim Brodrick of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and from a panel that examined the science of energy savings, and how LEDs were—and weren't—making the grade on efficiency. Brodrick took the stage to cheers from the ArchLED audience, and talked about both the advancements and setbacks facing researchers who are trying to produce better light from SSL products, make their materials more sustainable, cut their costs and improve their efficiency.
Brodrick's speech was echoed in the tech-centric panels of Day Three, where experts took a more in-depth look at the ideas he'd touched on only briefly. The first session of the day was focused on the money side of SSL, and how those products compared—over the lifecycle—to the expenses associated with other types of lighting. The second panel tackled the quality question, bringing designers and manufacturers together to talk about the perils of over-hype, and how responsible experts on both sides could help uninformed end-users navigate the wild and potentially treacherous SSL waters. A third panel looked deep into the data on energy efficiency.
