February 25, 2025 • 36 mins
Is lighting design an art or a science? In this episode we feature Koert Vermeulen from ACT Lighting Design, based in Brussels, Belgium. Koert was one of our earliest thought leaders to share on the Virtual Lighting Design Community platform and it was certainly a memorable presentation.
Initially, Koert's presentation was shared only with premium members of the community. However, since opening up the community to a wider audience late last year and introducing free memberships, everyone will be able to have access to the great information shared by our earlier presenters. We have seen a tremendous amount of new members join the community and this is why we are excited to re-release this episode again. This time also as a podcast episode. Please enjoy and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
"Recreate exceptional experiences at the intersection of design, arts, and innovation." — Koert Vermeulen
Lighting is much more than just illumination—it's an art form that transforms spaces and experiences. Koert delves deep in to how lighting can evoke emotions, encourages interaction, and enhances narratives in environments. He shares his insights on the interplay of creativity and engineering, revealing the nuances that separate great lighting from mere functionality.
A central theme of the presentation is about the importance of storytelling in design and how a multidisciplinary approach helps blend visuals, sound, and interactivity into co-created experiences. Koert also discusses innovative brainstorming methods, like Miro, that enhance collaboration among team members, making the creative process more fluid and effective.
This presentation is not just for lighting design professionals; it’s for anyone interested in the art of creating memorable experiences. Join us as we take an in depth look at how thoughtful design can impact our lives and spaces.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi and good morning, good afternoon for the people
watching this first episode ofseason one of the virtual
lighting design communitythoughts leaders podcast, vlog,
vlog cast I don't know how tosay it, but anyway, we are here.
I'm going to talk of the art oflighting design.
(00:24):
I'm going to talk of the art oflighting design and for doing
(00:47):
so it's a little bit to give youan insight in what we feel is
the difference between acreative lighting design and a
more engineered lighting designmaybe, which you could expect
from the installer side orengineering firms that are a
little bit more concerned aboutthe technical part of lighting
than the artistic side oflighting.
My name is Kurt Vermeulen.
I run a company called ACT-LDor ACT Lighting Design, based in
Brussels, belgium, that is forsure.
(01:08):
We are a middle-sized company.
I think we have 22 peoplerunning here around being
creative and trying to always beon the top of our toes.
Be on the top of our toes andin this particular talk, I'm
(01:29):
going to go deeper a little bitin this first part about why
ACT-LD, what we do is what we do, and also afterwards I'm going
to talk a little bit about howwe create.
I'm just going to say, with aconceptual design I'm not going
to schematic designing or designdevelopment is also a very
important part of all the umphases that you have to go
(01:50):
through to make your lightingdesign an actual reality.
But I thought in this talk Iwould really concentrate on that
conceptual thinking part,recreate exceptional experiences
at the intersection of design,arts and innovation.
This you can find on ourwebsite, which is an easy thing
(02:11):
to actually say, a little bitmore difficult to actually put
it into practice.
And we started out as anentertainment lighting design
firm, quickly branched outalready in the year 2000 around
that, into the architecturalfield, and actually those two
are mixed together today in whatwe call experience design,
(02:33):
which is a bit broader than thepure lighting design that we're
used to walking into.
It all starts a little bit withour expertises.
We are an experience designstudio.
We really need to stress that alittle bit because, like I said
, we started from lighting.
We are now fully intoexperience design with a much
wider spectrum of fields ofexpertise that we are touching
(02:57):
today than we were doing before.
It goes from.
Of course, lighting is stillthe most important part, but we
also, you know, design andfollow through on the video, on
the sound, on the music, ofcourse, set design or
scenography, special effects,sophisticated control systems
(03:17):
and interactive systems, or whatwe also call public engagement
or customer engagement elementsthat we try to also mix so that
those reality in the digitalworld actually are able to mix
into one another.
How we start with that?
The most notable thing that wedo is storytelling.
(03:40):
Storytelling we want to createworlds and stories that actually
connect, to inspire theaudience that we apply to, and
whatever technology that we have, it always has to be in
function actually of thatstorytelling element that we do.
In our multidisciplinaryapproach, approach, we're also a
(04:03):
company that really goes from aconcept complete to operation,
because it's we also feel thatonly at the end of this process,
um, we're only finally beingable to, you know, put the finer
touches on, uh, all of thesethings at the end, when we are
doing the programming, we aredoing the uh, the focusing of
(04:24):
the lighting, uh, and you know,we are putting all the scenes
together so that people areactually enjoying, uh, or being
captivated, but what we felt isthe thing that we needed to do.
So our expertise is and this isjust a little bit of a of a big
background that we actually do.
We kind of separated it in afew elements.
(04:47):
We got a high level creativedesign, which starts with
creative direction, goes intolighting design, scenography and
content creation.
These are actually the elementsthat we feel is mostly on the
storytelling part, or we couldeven say that these kind of
things need a scenario almost tobe able to happen and to become
(05:12):
made to life.
The second level is the creativedesign itself, where I want to
include music or composing, notto be on the second level but at
the first level, above it.
But we don't have composersactually inside our company.
(05:34):
We usually always outsource orwe work with partners in that
respect.
But everything that has to dowith the visual elements that
comes next to this high levelpart aquatic design, special
effects design, audio and videosystems and interaction design
are for us at that second level,technical design itself, which
(06:01):
comes with system engineering,show control systems, technical
direction, alsopre-visualization and
programming and production andproject management.
Otherwise we wouldn't be ableto get there actually.
So, going over this overallpresentation of the way we work
(06:24):
at ACPOD and we have thisinnovation lab that actually
helps us a lot with being on thecutting edge of the project
deliveries that we want to do.
The second part of thispresentation is about to show
you how we collaborateinternally, how we brainstorm,
(06:48):
how we brainstorm and how we aregetting to a conceptual design
at the end of the road, where weboth say okay, or we both.
We are multiple people inoffice, but the team says okay,
we're all happy about what thisworks.
In that respect, I want to beclear about one thing
Brainstorming is a very goodthing, but you have to do it in
the right kind of way.
We have been trying a lot alongthe years to do this one, this
(07:13):
one or the other one.
In the end, the one that wewere capable of maintaining a
high level of creativity, butalso a personal satisfaction
level for the people that areworking in there, is to have
brainstormings with not morethan four, but at least two,
ideally three people actually inthe team itself.
(07:37):
We felt that when you have morethan those people, it's flooded
.
People were afraid to sharethings that maybe were a good
idea, afraid for failure, andwhen you don't have enough
people, yeah, then you getsatisfied quickly enough about
(07:58):
what you are hearing or what youare saying yourself that you
can't really go much furtherthan that.
So for us, the team that workson the conceptual design, is
three ideal maximum corecategory people that actually
work together on this.
So Miro is not a program that weonly started working with
(08:20):
during the pandemic.
It was something that we'vealready been using, actually
before, because it gives us thispossibility to work both
remotely but also in the sameoffice on a kind of infinity
(08:46):
desktop canvas into which youcan place whatever you like into
it and use it as a virtualbrainstorming tool.
What you used to be thinkingabout and doing in an office,
sitting around the table,pushing yellow notes or whatever
on the board and pushing thoseideas outside, is now
essentially what you can do hereon this collaboration tool, and
the good thing about it is thememory that it has for me,
(09:10):
because on a project like this,which you actually now you only
see maybe 20% I'm just goingthrough the whole document a
little bit and show you how wecan work with these things
together is the fact that at theend, with this infant canvas,
(09:35):
we are able to go from one tothe other, but we never forget
what we actually have puttogether here and we can always
go back to where we came from inthe beginning, to be able to
make sure that what we have as areference, or what we thought
about maybe a month ago, isstill always available, because
(09:58):
we have felt that 22 people inthe office and multiple years of
that is one of the mostimportant things to be able to
understand how to keep yourknowledge together.
The knowledge base is one ofour deepest concerns at the
(10:19):
moment on how to really keep theknowledge that we produce,
maybe with a small team of fourpeople, and to be able to share
that outside to the other peoplearound us.
So I'm now going to just goquickly into a few of these
details.
I mean, as you've seen already,we're talking here about a
(10:41):
Bebouche life history roll, forwhich we have been doing quite
some work over the last twomonths.
But it all starts and that's agreat thing way you can zoom
actually in.
Oh yeah, this is what you callthe trash bin.
That's okay.
Uh is all the elements that thatwe find online and that gives
(11:04):
us quite a little bit of let'sgo back uh information that
could be nice, could be possibleto actually understand this or
not, but in here, one of thefirst things that we see that
we've done was talk about thestoryline, and we made a little
(11:31):
work about that.
That storyline is to understandwhat the bush would mean for us
, um, what we feel that weshould uh, hide, uh and and put
into the light in this kind ofthing, and so this kind of
storyline was the first basisactually put into it, the
(11:51):
inspiration behind it.
Um, I'm not going to go intotoo much detail, I'm just going
to go quickly over.
That is something that most ofyou are used to.
You go online or you go intoyour library and you're putting
some stuff together that youfeel that are beautiful, or
there are things that you couldactually put in there.
(12:11):
Put in there.
I come here to the problems tosolve, because a lot of our
talks which we usually do, atleast on a project like this,
where we have five, six weeks toyou know, to start from concept
is we have at least one meetingwith all of us together during
(12:33):
each couple of hours of the week, in which the artistic director
or creative director is there,which in this case is me, and
then the two or three peoplethat are there, and sometimes we
even involve maybe a fifthperson into this process because
(12:54):
sometimes we feel we just wantto have a third look or a third
eye on some of the things thatwe're doing.
But those problems that we needto solve are as important as
all the other ones, as thestorytelling that we need to
also put together.
We also talk about thestakeholders.
(13:15):
At that moment, who is actuallyworking in there, and what I'm
showing now is actually becausethat was the good thing about
this project here is that we sawthe project of last year, which
was not developed by us butwhich we have visited, and we
put also into our brainstorm tohear all those elements a little
(13:38):
bit together, to make sure thatwe always understood what are
those things that worked fromlast year, what were the things
that didn't work, importantplaces that we felt that was
there and in this respect, wejust go on week after week.
We keep everything that we haveactually in there and in this
respect, we just go on weekafter week.
We keep everything that we haveactually in there.
(14:01):
And so here I see a thing thatwas done, the elements, people
were responsible for the task,how it was actually named and
what I really love about that,and maybe, if you see my
background here behind me.
I am one that kind of likes towork with elements around me,
(14:27):
the proverbial atelier d'artistewhere you come in and you have
lots of paintings and lots ofstuff that's hanging around and
paint brushes everywhere, andyou know, um, that, for me, is a
creative environment.
That one is, for me, anenvironment that stimulates and
that actually puts me somewherewhere I would like to go um and
(14:52):
in in my house where I'mactually taping this
presentation here.
Well, there's not a wall, thatis free, everything.
I've got art on the walls, I'vegot books lying around
everywhere, I've got smalllittle sculptures, I've got
lighting systems around me, allthe things that I think is
(15:13):
important for me to be able to,you know, to be stimulated.
I keep that around me, all thethings that I think is important
for me to be able to, you know,to be stimulated.
I keep that around me, andthat's actually what I found in
this presentation, in this kindof methodology of working, is
where you know that amassment ofinformation actually helps me
to really, you know, be creativeand make the right decisions,
(15:36):
and I can always go back tosomething that I've seen before,
which I think is one of themost important elements that we
have.
So I'm not going to bore you ormaybe it's not boring you but
I'm going to get you to all theelements that we have put
together.
All the elements that we haveput together I think I made my
(15:57):
points about how we actually,you know, make a concept from,
you know, from a brainstorm, toa conceptual design point of
view, the storyline, what yousee here, that we have maybe,
that's, maybe good to see.
This is one of the storylineswith which we started out, in
(16:18):
which we based a lot of ourthings and which was then
subsequently ignored completelyat the end of our work that we
have done on this presentation,because, although we have
developed this into quite somedetail, when we went finally on
(16:41):
slides for the second time andwe had the new um kind of
parkour that we had to walkthrough um, the, the, the, the
time, the, the, the, thethematic of time, was no longer
possible in using the dog only,and that is also something that
(17:01):
I think is important.
If we talk about um, how toconceptualize um, don't be
afraid of change the, what youfeel at some point into your
presentation, or I mean in yourconceptual development, if at
some point you are saying, youknow, don't try to always keep
(17:24):
the thing that you thought of inthe beginning, you know, if it
doesn't work, just, you know,ignore it, come up with another
one.
And that is exactly what wehave done here.
When we understood that thelocations that we originally had
from the year before were allgoing to change, and it went
(17:46):
into a completely new kind oflocation specification which we
said listen, we cannot longerplay that past, present and
future timeline anymore, and sowe have to get rid of this.
So what I want to say aboutthat is don't be afraid actually
to do this.
(18:07):
Then what we are, just tofinish this actually off, we
have not a problem problem inactually doing this kind of work
.
And then at some point we havea conceptual lining here that
comes together, which we youknow the zoning itself, the
(18:30):
picture of the actual locationof our work, the visual of the
element that we think we need togo to, or the reference element
that we have, and the notesinto this.
And this is the kind of lastwork that we do in this
collaboration tool until wefinalize the whole project
(18:53):
together into the final step.
And I'm just going into thatlast part.
I mean, what you can see hereis we did that work twice.
One was on the old parkour thatwe did and the one on the new
one, and by then we were so wellin first with all the elements
(19:17):
that we wanted to do that.
From here onwards it wentstraight into the whole strategy
that is actually put togetherin this slide here.
Now, all that work that we'vedone at MyRobot is never lost on
just one project.
A lot of times we can actuallyuse what we have done there and
(19:40):
extrapolate that into otherprojects also.
That's why I don't mind on someoccasions to go quite deep and
more than the hours are actuallyallowed, on that reflection of
the story and on the reflectionof the internal work that we put
(20:01):
into that, because a lot oftimes we can actually recuperate
ideas that we developed intonew projects.
That's an important part.
At the end, the document thatwe actually bring out to our
clients is something like thisQuite a, you know, 20, 30 pages,
(20:22):
32 pages of the essence of thatsix weeks long process that we
actually went through.
That's a shame sometimes thatwe need to be very concise and
(20:44):
very precise with what we show,what we don't want to show.
The choices that we have madeare maybe 1% of all the things
that we actually developedtogether into this thing, but it
is up to us to make thatdecision and to show to our
client what our end decision is,and not to show what the
(21:09):
process is in that part, becausewhy would you hire a lighting
designer if it was not forhaving someone who
professionally decides what isthe best solution for that
project?
That is dead.
(21:29):
As the last part in thispresentation, I want to talk
about the project of Chariot,which is a pure architectural
project, which I thought wasalso an interesting way of
actually finalizing thispresentation on the art of
lighting and to show how thisstorytelling and these elements
actually come together in a purearchitectural form.
(21:51):
Um, site analysis, uh, is amain part of the first element
that you actually do when you'redoing your work for this.
I don't think I'm sayingsomething new about that.
During that site analysis, welook at accesses and connections
.
There is the complete projectoverview and I think that Miro
(22:13):
for this, again, I'm reallypushing forward and if you want
25% discounts on your next Mirothing, go to our website and ask
for the coupon.
I'm joking, but I do love Miro.
But this kind of overview wherewe have the plan and we see all
the elevations, we see all thevisuals and all come together,
(22:37):
for me that that is golden.
This works for me so well tounderstand what the site is
about, especially when it's notbuilt yet you haven't been able
to visit it.
This kind of overview is, forme, golden.
To be able to go forward thekeywords is something that also
(22:58):
comes from the analysis.
A lot of times we take it outof the presentation from the
client or the developer, or someof them we create ourselves,
but it's a really important partof what we then would define at
the end of this road as thevision and the goals.
Vision and the goals and, inthis particular part, the iconic
(23:22):
destination, the eveningexperience together with the day
experience, flexibility and themultiple views of the different
spaces that we have, the use ofdynamic lighting to be evolving
over time, and data collection,scalability and reusability and
, of course, at the end of theday, that's the human-centric
design or that socialinteraction, engagement that
(23:42):
needs to be followed through.
And this is actually the.
You know, this is our main partthat we use at the end of the
day, to go over and to see howwe can actually obtain these
kind of things.
The architectural concept is,of course, something that we get
from the architect itself.
We do an interpretation of that.
We also have to check sometimesif these kind of things
(24:03):
actually work, but it's aninformation that is absolutely
necessary for us to be able, youknow, to go forward with these
kind of elements.
I'm just showing you a littlebit of slides.
The slides, the way I'm walkingthrough, which is much
different than the one that wedid for the Bruges Light
(24:31):
Festival, is because Miro let'sus also almost use it like a
PowerPoint or like a Prezipresentation moment.
You can put them into kind ofslides and then you can just
walk through them, actuallybeginning to the end.
Sorry, I went material technicsagain, not from us, come from
the client, from the, from thearchitect or some, is coming
from us.
But here I think we come to oneof the most important slides
(24:55):
that we develop from thatbrainstorming and from that
analysis and stuff like that,which is really the high level
concept, where the canopyenvironment for us was one of
the most important elements as acommunication tool and so on,
and how we actually bring thatup environment, we go further
(25:32):
with this and we use then thisfirst part of the whole concept
development into a morestrategic, actionable way of
working.
So those first visions andgoals are now really put into
four strategies, which isattract, experience, engage and
linger, and these four elementsare then actually used along the
(25:56):
way all the time to get towhere we need to be.
We know for whom we aredesigning, which is quite an
important part, and thenactually that creative proposal
is actually put into motionwhere we go through it.
But it's maybe just good tojust look at this overview that
(26:16):
we have here, because, again,when you're not engaged in this
project day to day likesometimes I am and you're only
getting it to see once a week,to see where we are, the fact of
being able to have this kind ofoverview, for me again that is
one of the most important things.
(26:38):
This creative proposal that goesover the vertical and
horizontal elements, that alsogets those four strategies
always looking alive and see howwe actually get there.
That is for me a very importantelement.
Like I said, vertical elementswe show how we want to attract,
(26:59):
how we see the lightinghierarchy actually working.
There we go to volumes andgeometry enhancements and that
is more for the engagement parts.
Vertical continuity we arelooking at horizontal elements.
Now I don't want to show youhere exactly what the concept is
(27:23):
, and I'm selling this projectto you, so I go over them a
little bit more quickly, but yousee at least what are the main
elements.
The result of what we've doneis not that important in my
presentation.
Access points we look at urbanfurniture.
We look at possible artinstallations, whether they are
permanent or non-permanent.
We look at the squares and howwe can actually and the access
(27:47):
points and how we can go fromthere.
We look at the overallfunctional lighting and we make
a strategy for those kind ofthings.
We look at the squares, theboulevards and, of course, the
canopy icon where in thisparticular case we give him
three different options Lookingat really as an item, a big
(28:12):
element you know, 45 meters high, 30 meters in diameter, a
really big element, or maybe togo over a very smaller element,
which is the one here in themiddle, or to use the complete
canopy and to use it as a screenabove the people which we can
then project to the other thing.
(28:33):
So that kind of elements.
We kind of sorry that went alittle bit too quick.
So those kind of elements arewe then trying to make our
client understand, mostlythrough reference images,
sometimes through visuals,depends where we are in our
project.
(28:53):
And the last part not the lastpart, but the three elements
that were missing so far in ourdesign strategy was engage and
linger, and that has a big partto do with how we generate
content.
This is a thing where we withACP we have been working on
(29:18):
quite a lot to be able to get toa kind of content generation
system that works 24 hours a dayand where we have lots of
different content that actuallyneeds to be developed, to be put
together, whether it's curated,user-defined or data-generated
content.
I think we stole from Tapio hissentence about the ambient
(29:44):
communication tool, but that'sokay because actually in this
project we were going to use theScandal technologies media
server or ambient communicationtool anyway to bring it in there
.
We are looking at differentuses of the space over the
(30:05):
seasons, whether it's permanentor non-permanent.
Those are elements we alsolooked into and we have
strategies that go with it.
And then we also come to thisengagement element how to engage
and keep your public togetherin both the digital and the
(30:28):
reality world.
So we have this interactionstrategy, which is both based on
physical elements, interactiveconsoles and app integration.
Interactive consoles and appintegration we looked at the
water features and urbanfurniture and how they would be
able to be used in thisinteraction element.
(30:48):
And then, of course, thepermanent or non-permanent art
installations, experientialactivations or seasonal events
that will also be part of theelement.
An element that comes to mind alot of the times is the empty
shop problem, which usually getssprayed on paint to make it not
(31:13):
look empty from the inside.
We feel that it's sometimes avery good attraction point in
which we can put a non-permanentinstallation as an art
installation which is not thatcostly and at least it engages
your audience to go further.
So how to go further with theengage and lingering elements is
(31:34):
through the experience, resultsand the canopy itself.
So that was actually the end ofthat overall thinking process
that we went into, and the nextcouple of slides is again this
compression of all those ideasand all those elements together
(31:54):
into what we would call then, ofcourse, our creative strategy,
to be shared with the client andbut also to make him understand
that everything that that wehave done is actually put in
into a few words that wesometimes also refer to as the
CEO short version, and becausethey don't want to spend more
(32:17):
time than 15 minutes or 20minutes on something like this,
and we know, and we know how toto deal with that also.
So, uh, this kind of five orsix slides together is that kind
of ceo compressed presentationwhere we try to put as much as
all the elements together thatwe have presented and all within
(32:38):
a very, very tight timeline.
This is the end of thepresentation, episode one,
season one, the Art of LightingDesign for the VLDC Virtual
Lighting Design Community.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope I didn't share too muchof our internal kitchen here,
(33:00):
otherwise I get slapped by mypartners.
But you know, you don't share,you don't care, and that's an
expression that is sometimesused.
If there's any more questionsabout this, I am easily to be
joined on any of the socialmedia, whether it's Instagram or
(33:26):
Facebook or LinkedIn.
Facebook, I don't like thatmuch, but LinkedIn and Instagram
are my two favorite ones, ifnot just by the regular email,
which is still available andeasy to find on the internet.
I'm not hidden in that muchrespect.
Thank you so much, vldc, sharonMartin and Katia, for also
having me in this presentation.
(33:49):
I always feel that what you'redoing for the community is grand
.
We were missing this kind ofview on how to communicate about
our industry, which we love somuch.
So thank you again and I'll seeyou next time.
Bye-bye.
Hi and good morning, good afternoon for the people
watching this first episode ofseason one of the virtual
lighting design communitythoughts leaders podcast, vlog,
vlog cast I don't know how tosay it, but anyway, we are here.
I'm going to talk of the art oflighting design.
(00:24):
I'm going to talk of the art oflighting design and for doing
(00:47):
so it's a little bit to give youan insight in what we feel is
the difference between acreative lighting design and a
more engineered lighting designmaybe, which you could expect
from the installer side orengineering firms that are a
little bit more concerned aboutthe technical part of lighting
than the artistic side oflighting.
My name is Kurt Vermeulen.
I run a company called ACT-LDor ACT Lighting Design, based in
Brussels, belgium, that is forsure.
(01:08):
We are a middle-sized company.
I think we have 22 peoplerunning here around being
creative and trying to always beon the top of our toes.
Be on the top of our toes andin this particular talk, I'm
(01:29):
going to go deeper a little bitin this first part about why
ACT-LD, what we do is what we do, and also afterwards I'm going
to talk a little bit about howwe create.
I'm just going to say, with aconceptual design I'm not going
to schematic designing or designdevelopment is also a very
important part of all the umphases that you have to go
(01:50):
through to make your lightingdesign an actual reality.
But I thought in this talk Iwould really concentrate on that
conceptual thinking part,recreate exceptional experiences
at the intersection of design,arts and innovation.
This you can find on ourwebsite, which is an easy thing
(02:11):
to actually say, a little bitmore difficult to actually put
it into practice.
And we started out as anentertainment lighting design
firm, quickly branched outalready in the year 2000 around
that, into the architecturalfield, and actually those two
are mixed together today in whatwe call experience design,
(02:33):
which is a bit broader than thepure lighting design that we're
used to walking into.
It all starts a little bit withour expertises.
We are an experience designstudio.
We really need to stress that alittle bit because, like I said
, we started from lighting.
We are now fully intoexperience design with a much
wider spectrum of fields ofexpertise that we are touching
(02:57):
today than we were doing before.
It goes from.
Of course, lighting is stillthe most important part, but we
also, you know, design andfollow through on the video, on
the sound, on the music, ofcourse, set design or
scenography, special effects,sophisticated control systems
(03:17):
and interactive systems, or whatwe also call public engagement
or customer engagement elementsthat we try to also mix so that
those reality in the digitalworld actually are able to mix
into one another.
How we start with that?
The most notable thing that wedo is storytelling.
(03:40):
Storytelling we want to createworlds and stories that actually
connect, to inspire theaudience that we apply to, and
whatever technology that we have, it always has to be in
function actually of thatstorytelling element that we do.
In our multidisciplinaryapproach, approach, we're also a
(04:03):
company that really goes from aconcept complete to operation,
because it's we also feel thatonly at the end of this process,
um, we're only finally beingable to, you know, put the finer
touches on, uh, all of thesethings at the end, when we are
doing the programming, we aredoing the uh, the focusing of
(04:24):
the lighting, uh, and you know,we are putting all the scenes
together so that people areactually enjoying, uh, or being
captivated, but what we felt isthe thing that we needed to do.
So our expertise is and this isjust a little bit of a of a big
background that we actually do.
We kind of separated it in afew elements.
(04:47):
We got a high level creativedesign, which starts with
creative direction, goes intolighting design, scenography and
content creation.
These are actually the elementsthat we feel is mostly on the
storytelling part, or we couldeven say that these kind of
things need a scenario almost tobe able to happen and to become
(05:12):
made to life.
The second level is the creativedesign itself, where I want to
include music or composing, notto be on the second level but at
the first level, above it.
But we don't have composersactually inside our company.
(05:34):
We usually always outsource orwe work with partners in that
respect.
But everything that has to dowith the visual elements that
comes next to this high levelpart aquatic design, special
effects design, audio and videosystems and interaction design
are for us at that second level,technical design itself, which
(06:01):
comes with system engineering,show control systems, technical
direction, alsopre-visualization and
programming and production andproject management.
Otherwise we wouldn't be ableto get there actually.
So, going over this overallpresentation of the way we work
(06:24):
at ACPOD and we have thisinnovation lab that actually
helps us a lot with being on thecutting edge of the project
deliveries that we want to do.
The second part of thispresentation is about to show
you how we collaborateinternally, how we brainstorm,
(06:48):
how we brainstorm and how we aregetting to a conceptual design
at the end of the road, where weboth say okay, or we both.
We are multiple people inoffice, but the team says okay,
we're all happy about what thisworks.
In that respect, I want to beclear about one thing
Brainstorming is a very goodthing, but you have to do it in
the right kind of way.
We have been trying a lot alongthe years to do this one, this
(07:13):
one or the other one.
In the end, the one that wewere capable of maintaining a
high level of creativity, butalso a personal satisfaction
level for the people that areworking in there, is to have
brainstormings with not morethan four, but at least two,
ideally three people actually inthe team itself.
(07:37):
We felt that when you have morethan those people, it's flooded
.
People were afraid to sharethings that maybe were a good
idea, afraid for failure, andwhen you don't have enough
people, yeah, then you getsatisfied quickly enough about
(07:58):
what you are hearing or what youare saying yourself that you
can't really go much furtherthan that.
So for us, the team that workson the conceptual design, is
three ideal maximum corecategory people that actually
work together on this.
So Miro is not a program that weonly started working with
(08:20):
during the pandemic.
It was something that we'vealready been using, actually
before, because it gives us thispossibility to work both
remotely but also in the sameoffice on a kind of infinity
(08:46):
desktop canvas into which youcan place whatever you like into
it and use it as a virtualbrainstorming tool.
What you used to be thinkingabout and doing in an office,
sitting around the table,pushing yellow notes or whatever
on the board and pushing thoseideas outside, is now
essentially what you can do hereon this collaboration tool, and
the good thing about it is thememory that it has for me,
(09:10):
because on a project like this,which you actually now you only
see maybe 20% I'm just goingthrough the whole document a
little bit and show you how wecan work with these things
together is the fact that at theend, with this infant canvas,
(09:35):
we are able to go from one tothe other, but we never forget
what we actually have puttogether here and we can always
go back to where we came from inthe beginning, to be able to
make sure that what we have as areference, or what we thought
about maybe a month ago, isstill always available, because
(09:58):
we have felt that 22 people inthe office and multiple years of
that is one of the mostimportant things to be able to
understand how to keep yourknowledge together.
The knowledge base is one ofour deepest concerns at the
(10:19):
moment on how to really keep theknowledge that we produce,
maybe with a small team of fourpeople, and to be able to share
that outside to the other peoplearound us.
So I'm now going to just goquickly into a few of these
details.
I mean, as you've seen already,we're talking here about a
(10:41):
Bebouche life history roll, forwhich we have been doing quite
some work over the last twomonths.
But it all starts and that's agreat thing way you can zoom
actually in.
Oh yeah, this is what you callthe trash bin.
That's okay.
Uh is all the elements that thatwe find online and that gives
(11:04):
us quite a little bit of let'sgo back uh information that
could be nice, could be possibleto actually understand this or
not, but in here, one of thefirst things that we see that
we've done was talk about thestoryline, and we made a little
(11:31):
work about that.
That storyline is to understandwhat the bush would mean for us
, um, what we feel that weshould uh, hide, uh and and put
into the light in this kind ofthing, and so this kind of
storyline was the first basisactually put into it, the
(11:51):
inspiration behind it.
Um, I'm not going to go intotoo much detail, I'm just going
to go quickly over.
That is something that most ofyou are used to.
You go online or you go intoyour library and you're putting
some stuff together that youfeel that are beautiful, or
there are things that you couldactually put in there.
(12:11):
Put in there.
I come here to the problems tosolve, because a lot of our
talks which we usually do, atleast on a project like this,
where we have five, six weeks toyou know, to start from concept
is we have at least one meetingwith all of us together during
(12:33):
each couple of hours of the week, in which the artistic director
or creative director is there,which in this case is me, and
then the two or three peoplethat are there, and sometimes we
even involve maybe a fifthperson into this process because
(12:54):
sometimes we feel we just wantto have a third look or a third
eye on some of the things thatwe're doing.
But those problems that we needto solve are as important as
all the other ones, as thestorytelling that we need to
also put together.
We also talk about thestakeholders.
(13:15):
At that moment, who is actuallyworking in there, and what I'm
showing now is actually becausethat was the good thing about
this project here is that we sawthe project of last year, which
was not developed by us butwhich we have visited, and we
put also into our brainstorm tohear all those elements a little
(13:38):
bit together, to make sure thatwe always understood what are
those things that worked fromlast year, what were the things
that didn't work, importantplaces that we felt that was
there and in this respect, wejust go on week after week.
We keep everything that we haveactually in there and in this
respect, we just go on weekafter week.
We keep everything that we haveactually in there.
(14:01):
And so here I see a thing thatwas done, the elements, people
were responsible for the task,how it was actually named and
what I really love about that,and maybe, if you see my
background here behind me.
I am one that kind of likes towork with elements around me,
(14:27):
the proverbial atelier d'artistewhere you come in and you have
lots of paintings and lots ofstuff that's hanging around and
paint brushes everywhere, andyou know, um, that, for me, is a
creative environment.
That one is, for me, anenvironment that stimulates and
that actually puts me somewherewhere I would like to go um and
(14:52):
in in my house where I'mactually taping this
presentation here.
Well, there's not a wall, thatis free, everything.
I've got art on the walls, I'vegot books lying around
everywhere, I've got smalllittle sculptures, I've got
lighting systems around me, allthe things that I think is
(15:13):
important for me to be able to,you know, to be stimulated.
I keep that around me, all thethings that I think is important
for me to be able to, you know,to be stimulated.
I keep that around me, andthat's actually what I found in
this presentation, in this kindof methodology of working, is
where you know that amassment ofinformation actually helps me
to really, you know, be creativeand make the right decisions,
(15:36):
and I can always go back tosomething that I've seen before,
which I think is one of themost important elements that we
have.
So I'm not going to bore you ormaybe it's not boring you but
I'm going to get you to all theelements that we have put
together.
All the elements that we haveput together I think I made my
(15:57):
points about how we actually,you know, make a concept from,
you know, from a brainstorm, toa conceptual design point of
view, the storyline, what yousee here, that we have maybe,
that's, maybe good to see.
This is one of the storylineswith which we started out, in
(16:18):
which we based a lot of ourthings and which was then
subsequently ignored completelyat the end of our work that we
have done on this presentation,because, although we have
developed this into quite somedetail, when we went finally on
(16:41):
slides for the second time andwe had the new um kind of
parkour that we had to walkthrough um, the, the, the, the
time, the, the, the, thethematic of time, was no longer
possible in using the dog only,and that is also something that
(17:01):
I think is important.
If we talk about um, how toconceptualize um, don't be
afraid of change the, what youfeel at some point into your
presentation, or I mean in yourconceptual development, if at
some point you are saying, youknow, don't try to always keep
(17:24):
the thing that you thought of inthe beginning, you know, if it
doesn't work, just, you know,ignore it, come up with another
one.
And that is exactly what wehave done here.
When we understood that thelocations that we originally had
from the year before were allgoing to change, and it went
(17:46):
into a completely new kind oflocation specification which we
said listen, we cannot longerplay that past, present and
future timeline anymore, and sowe have to get rid of this.
So what I want to say aboutthat is don't be afraid actually
to do this.
(18:07):
Then what we are, just tofinish this actually off, we
have not a problem problem inactually doing this kind of work
.
And then at some point we havea conceptual lining here that
comes together, which we youknow the zoning itself, the
(18:30):
picture of the actual locationof our work, the visual of the
element that we think we need togo to, or the reference element
that we have, and the notesinto this.
And this is the kind of lastwork that we do in this
collaboration tool until wefinalize the whole project
(18:53):
together into the final step.
And I'm just going into thatlast part.
I mean, what you can see hereis we did that work twice.
One was on the old parkour thatwe did and the one on the new
one, and by then we were so wellin first with all the elements
(19:17):
that we wanted to do that.
From here onwards it wentstraight into the whole strategy
that is actually put togetherin this slide here.
Now, all that work that we'vedone at MyRobot is never lost on
just one project.
A lot of times we can actuallyuse what we have done there and
(19:40):
extrapolate that into otherprojects also.
That's why I don't mind on someoccasions to go quite deep and
more than the hours are actuallyallowed, on that reflection of
the story and on the reflectionof the internal work that we put
(20:01):
into that, because a lot oftimes we can actually recuperate
ideas that we developed intonew projects.
That's an important part.
At the end, the document thatwe actually bring out to our
clients is something like thisQuite a, you know, 20, 30 pages,
(20:22):
32 pages of the essence of thatsix weeks long process that we
actually went through.
That's a shame sometimes thatwe need to be very concise and
(20:44):
very precise with what we show,what we don't want to show.
The choices that we have madeare maybe 1% of all the things
that we actually developedtogether into this thing, but it
is up to us to make thatdecision and to show to our
client what our end decision is,and not to show what the
(21:09):
process is in that part, becausewhy would you hire a lighting
designer if it was not forhaving someone who
professionally decides what isthe best solution for that
project?
That is dead.
(21:29):
As the last part in thispresentation, I want to talk
about the project of Chariot,which is a pure architectural
project, which I thought wasalso an interesting way of
actually finalizing thispresentation on the art of
lighting and to show how thisstorytelling and these elements
actually come together in a purearchitectural form.
(21:51):
Um, site analysis, uh, is amain part of the first element
that you actually do when you'redoing your work for this.
I don't think I'm sayingsomething new about that.
During that site analysis, welook at accesses and connections
.
There is the complete projectoverview and I think that Miro
(22:13):
for this, again, I'm reallypushing forward and if you want
25% discounts on your next Mirothing, go to our website and ask
for the coupon.
I'm joking, but I do love Miro.
But this kind of overview wherewe have the plan and we see all
the elevations, we see all thevisuals and all come together,
(22:37):
for me that that is golden.
This works for me so well tounderstand what the site is
about, especially when it's notbuilt yet you haven't been able
to visit it.
This kind of overview is, forme, golden.
To be able to go forward thekeywords is something that also
(22:58):
comes from the analysis.
A lot of times we take it outof the presentation from the
client or the developer, or someof them we create ourselves,
but it's a really important partof what we then would define at
the end of this road as thevision and the goals.
Vision and the goals and, inthis particular part, the iconic
(23:22):
destination, the eveningexperience together with the day
experience, flexibility and themultiple views of the different
spaces that we have, the use ofdynamic lighting to be evolving
over time, and data collection,scalability and reusability and
, of course, at the end of theday, that's the human-centric
design or that socialinteraction, engagement that
(23:42):
needs to be followed through.
And this is actually the.
You know, this is our main partthat we use at the end of the
day, to go over and to see howwe can actually obtain these
kind of things.
The architectural concept is,of course, something that we get
from the architect itself.
We do an interpretation of that.
We also have to check sometimesif these kind of things
(24:03):
actually work, but it's aninformation that is absolutely
necessary for us to be able, youknow, to go forward with these
kind of elements.
I'm just showing you a littlebit of slides.
The slides, the way I'm walkingthrough, which is much
different than the one that wedid for the Bruges Light
(24:31):
Festival, is because Miro let'sus also almost use it like a
PowerPoint or like a Prezipresentation moment.
You can put them into kind ofslides and then you can just
walk through them, actuallybeginning to the end.
Sorry, I went material technicsagain, not from us, come from
the client, from the, from thearchitect or some, is coming
from us.
But here I think we come to oneof the most important slides
(24:55):
that we develop from thatbrainstorming and from that
analysis and stuff like that,which is really the high level
concept, where the canopyenvironment for us was one of
the most important elements as acommunication tool and so on,
and how we actually bring thatup environment, we go further
(25:32):
with this and we use then thisfirst part of the whole concept
development into a morestrategic, actionable way of
working.
So those first visions andgoals are now really put into
four strategies, which isattract, experience, engage and
linger, and these four elementsare then actually used along the
(25:56):
way all the time to get towhere we need to be.
We know for whom we aredesigning, which is quite an
important part, and thenactually that creative proposal
is actually put into motionwhere we go through it.
But it's maybe just good tojust look at this overview that
(26:16):
we have here, because, again,when you're not engaged in this
project day to day likesometimes I am and you're only
getting it to see once a week,to see where we are, the fact of
being able to have this kind ofoverview, for me again that is
one of the most important things.
(26:38):
This creative proposal that goesover the vertical and
horizontal elements, that alsogets those four strategies
always looking alive and see howwe actually get there.
That is for me a very importantelement.
Like I said, vertical elementswe show how we want to attract,
(26:59):
how we see the lightinghierarchy actually working.
There we go to volumes andgeometry enhancements and that
is more for the engagement parts.
Vertical continuity we arelooking at horizontal elements.
Now I don't want to show youhere exactly what the concept is
(27:23):
, and I'm selling this projectto you, so I go over them a
little bit more quickly, but yousee at least what are the main
elements.
The result of what we've doneis not that important in my
presentation.
Access points we look at urbanfurniture.
We look at possible artinstallations, whether they are
permanent or non-permanent.
We look at the squares and howwe can actually and the access
(27:47):
points and how we can go fromthere.
We look at the overallfunctional lighting and we make
a strategy for those kind ofthings.
We look at the squares, theboulevards and, of course, the
canopy icon where in thisparticular case we give him
three different options Lookingat really as an item, a big
(28:12):
element you know, 45 meters high, 30 meters in diameter, a
really big element, or maybe togo over a very smaller element,
which is the one here in themiddle, or to use the complete
canopy and to use it as a screenabove the people which we can
then project to the other thing.
(28:33):
So that kind of elements.
We kind of sorry that went alittle bit too quick.
So those kind of elements arewe then trying to make our
client understand, mostlythrough reference images,
sometimes through visuals,depends where we are in our
project.
(28:53):
And the last part not the lastpart, but the three elements
that were missing so far in ourdesign strategy was engage and
linger, and that has a big partto do with how we generate
content.
This is a thing where we withACP we have been working on
(29:18):
quite a lot to be able to get toa kind of content generation
system that works 24 hours a dayand where we have lots of
different content that actuallyneeds to be developed, to be put
together, whether it's curated,user-defined or data-generated
content.
I think we stole from Tapio hissentence about the ambient
(29:44):
communication tool, but that'sokay because actually in this
project we were going to use theScandal technologies media
server or ambient communicationtool anyway to bring it in there
.
We are looking at differentuses of the space over the
(30:05):
seasons, whether it's permanentor non-permanent.
Those are elements we alsolooked into and we have
strategies that go with it.
And then we also come to thisengagement element how to engage
and keep your public togetherin both the digital and the
(30:28):
reality world.
So we have this interactionstrategy, which is both based on
physical elements, interactiveconsoles and app integration.
Interactive consoles and appintegration we looked at the
water features and urbanfurniture and how they would be
able to be used in thisinteraction element.
(30:48):
And then, of course, thepermanent or non-permanent art
installations, experientialactivations or seasonal events
that will also be part of theelement.
An element that comes to mind alot of the times is the empty
shop problem, which usually getssprayed on paint to make it not
(31:13):
look empty from the inside.
We feel that it's sometimes avery good attraction point in
which we can put a non-permanentinstallation as an art
installation which is not thatcostly and at least it engages
your audience to go further.
So how to go further with theengage and lingering elements is
(31:34):
through the experience, resultsand the canopy itself.
So that was actually the end ofthat overall thinking process
that we went into, and the nextcouple of slides is again this
compression of all those ideasand all those elements together
(31:54):
into what we would call then, ofcourse, our creative strategy,
to be shared with the client andbut also to make him understand
that everything that that wehave done is actually put in
into a few words that wesometimes also refer to as the
CEO short version, and becausethey don't want to spend more
(32:17):
time than 15 minutes or 20minutes on something like this,
and we know, and we know how toto deal with that also.
So, uh, this kind of five orsix slides together is that kind
of ceo compressed presentationwhere we try to put as much as
all the elements together thatwe have presented and all within
(32:38):
a very, very tight timeline.
This is the end of thepresentation, episode one,
season one, the Art of LightingDesign for the VLDC Virtual
Lighting Design Community.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope I didn't share too muchof our internal kitchen here,
(33:00):
otherwise I get slapped by mypartners.
But you know, you don't share,you don't care, and that's an
expression that is sometimesused.
If there's any more questionsabout this, I am easily to be
joined on any of the socialmedia, whether it's Instagram or
(33:26):
Facebook or LinkedIn.
Facebook, I don't like thatmuch, but LinkedIn and Instagram
are my two favorite ones, ifnot just by the regular email,
which is still available andeasy to find on the internet.
I'm not hidden in that muchrespect.
Thank you so much, vldc, sharonMartin and Katia, for also
having me in this presentation.
(33:49):
I always feel that what you'redoing for the community is grand
.
We were missing this kind ofview on how to communicate about
our industry, which we love somuch.
So thank you again and I'll seeyou next time.
Bye-bye.
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