Is Lighting The New Digital Media?
Over the last decade or so, many forms of entertainment and experiential content have gone through a digital transformation. Most obviously, the creation, distribution, sharing and streaming of music and films have been revolutionised by their transformation from analogue, fixed physical media into the digital realm. But many other forms of content and media have followed a very similar path, again leading to significant disruptive change in how they are made, used and indeed sold. Telephony, for example, has been transformed by applications such as Zoom and Whatsapp, and whole new business models for collaborative working and communication are developing. News and information publishing have changed radically at almost every level, from how it is gathered, transmitted and published to the way we consume and respond to it.
Yet while almost every other aspect of creative media is already well progressed along the digital superhighway, lighting is perhaps a forgotten form of ‘content’, remaining until recently firmly locked in its analogue, physical form. Suddenly, with new technologies, probably most notably the rapid rise of the LED as an everyday illumination source, the use of light has been freed from its mechanical boundaries. In recent years, whether we notice it or not, the form, quality, dynamics and range of lighting around us has changed hugely. More recent discoveries have suggested we should pay much greater attention to it for our fundamental health and well-being. It is increasingly used to engage and entertain our senses.
Lighting has become something that can and should change with time, respond to our needs and context, and that can potentially help us sleep, concentrate, or even get better quicker.
With the growth of these lighting applications, we are also becoming better at describing, quantifying and codifying components of the visual spectrum…..in essence allowing us to create with light, using it as a paint box, a media, that can be used in its own right or to promote, manipulate and enhance our senses.
From early steps by the likes of Lutron and Crestron in delivering bespoke lighting scenes at the touch of a button to the ever-growing interactive, collaborative lighting experiences of Philips Hue and Ambilight, people are starting to create and consume lighting experiences as they would music or movies.
But, as yet, we only really scratch the surface; for most people, the experience of artificial lighting stops at the light switch, where maybe a dimmer control or a table light for accent enhances the ambience. However, the creative possibilities only just becoming apparent in some homes and offices are perhaps about to be unleashed, where quality of lighting becomes as valued as a good sound system or gym membership. Skilled and creative people will be able to deliver better lighting and more engaging lit experiences to more and more people. It will become a valued asset – another media stream that we will want to tap into and shape around us.
Within a few years, it is probable that many of our offices, care environments, schools and public spaces will feature actively managed lighting – both to be efficient energy users but also to support those who use the spaces. Designers who understand and can create with light will be more and more valued, and more importantly, still, enabled to express that creativity. Light will become a streamable, shareable, valuable experiential media, unleashed, as many media before it, by its transformation from analogue bulbs to digital delivery.
David Eves - Director, Chief Technology Officer & Founder of amBX Ltd
