The Sichuan Fine Arts Institute – Lighting Seminar
Chongqing- Hong Kong, 25-27th October 2014
While I have meanwhile arrived in Hong Kong for the Lighting Fair, I would still like to blog about our second day in Chongqing (Saturday) that was organised by the CLDA in cooperation with the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, one of the famous art institutes in China. Students from all over China and I believe even from outside China apply to study here but only a “few” selected get admitted. When I say a few you have to appreciate that in the true grand Chinese way; thousands apply but only 2000 actually get admitted with many turned down. But it is fair to say that only the top crop of students makes it into this renowned institute. To make it even more elusive the principal of the institute is no other then mr. Luo Zhong Li, a world renowned Chinese oil painter whose paintings I understand sell for millions of RMB’s. We had the honour to meet Mr Luo to whom I presented a signed copy of my book in appreciation of his invitation to the CLDA to conduct training and seminars for the students. The CLDA, under Lear Hsieh’s guidance, have set up lighting design classes as part of the available curriculum at the Institute. The lighting seminar on Saturday was part of CLDA’s ongoing training program.
In the morning we first visited a site on the campus allocated as a workshop site for the students to apply and demonstrate their knowledge in outdoor lighting. The visiting CLDA members and speakers reviewed the proposed lighting installation by day as to share their thoughts and recommend some changes and improvements to the students for better effect. This would allow them to modify the installation so we could see the final result at night. Light fittings were provided by a local lighting sponsor. We also visited their exposition of lighting sketches. The interaction with the students, their questions and our expert feedback felt like a stimulating and gratifying interchange between the new and older generation of lighting designers.
The afternoon was filled with high quality presentations from the CLDA team; respectively myself, detailing the process of lighting design, James Wallace, who showed us how to create a meaningful immersive lighting environment, prof Zhuo, who shared his research and patented approach towards the quantification and qualification of LED in road lighting, Zhizhen Zhang with an insightful presentation about his work of lighting theme parks, Light Xu, with an in-depth expose about the appreciation of LED colour qualities (Ra1-15) and finally Roger Sexton with his practical and professional update on what can today be achieved in the field of LED colour consistency and lighting controls. Roger was speaking from his valued experience and background with Xicato, one of the leading and highly respected LED manufacturers in the world.
The day ended with a local and traditional Sichuan hotpot dinner where the mood (and noise) markedly raised to very happy levels as the evening progressed. A final stop was made at the student’s workshop site that we had visited in the morning to validate their efforts with our final review of the lighting effects at night. With our morning comments well implemented we concluded they had all done a great job. Congratulations to this new generation of future lighting designers at the SCFAI…you are on your way!
Light Watch 5-181: Impressions of the day…
As I will have quite a full day tomorrow (Monday) at the fair I may not be able to get my blog done, so hence the advanced posting…
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