my light.

(closed)
















(and opened)




















... and here's a video.



I started with the challenge of building a better desk lamp, with my main intuition being that I wanted something wall mounted and discrete to be more economical about space on a work surface. However, that quickly evolved into the question of what was important when it came to task lighting.

Why can't "task" be gratifying? Why can't it be stimulating? My lamp design evolved into a design challenge of bringing gratification to a useful, pragmatic object.


I took a lot of inspiration from things i'd seen recently:

1. the gratification from the changing colors of Michael Hayden's light installation at chicago o'hare airport.


























































2. the olafur eliasson exhibit at sfmoma:

the changing gradients of color...














and the transformation is built into the bridge entering the exhibit...



























(it's the same bridge... just uses polarized material that is silvery from one angle, i.e. entering, and brilliantly colored from the other, i.e. exiting.)






Some personal reflection (i need to get this down somewhere...):

Part of the assignment was to develop in an object a personal statement, i.e. a personal point of view on design and functionality. i was surprised to find that this did crystallize something for me... i was able to articulate four things, four words really, that were essential for me in designing this lamp. Gratification and stimulation were both part of that; contextual was another-- i'm obsessed with context and all the complex baggage that comes with it-- and the last word is still a bit unresolved... "dimensional" maybe? "enabling"? as words, none of those mean too much, i guess, but it's all part of... something more important. priorities. something that doesn't change about me-- not over time, space, or whatever else.

i felt-- amongst other presenters in my class-- that my design was ultimately about a sort of intellectualism. that it was a considered object. it was important to me that the lamp have a context. that it have use in a particular situation, but that the design itself was able to expand and empower that context-- to make it better, more compelling, or else to enable one to progress in some way. i think the other side to this is that it is all meant to be a part of someone's life, which is inherently complicated, emotional, variable, etc.

i like bridging the exercise of rationality with the tapping into something more human. and i think gratification is the right word for that, because unlike "pleasure," there is some sort of efficacy to gratification. something mental occurs in the user in order for an object to gratify, rather than just please. and yet gratification, like pleasure, inspires some degree of positive feedback, which is empowering and transformative if employed correctly. maybe it is all coming back to "transformative" and what a designer can transform. objects? experiences? expectations? societies?

well... today i'm a bit tired. but tomorrow, or soon thereafter, i will remember to post about rainy days/negative feedback systems, and i will put up my vision statement. which may help all of this make more sense.