Light

So I’ve been thinking about interesting ways to communicate issues surrounding energy use. I’ve been recording my daily consumption (lights on/off, how many times I use the kettle, how many times I flush the toilet, how I travel etc.). I’m recording my habits, but in doing so I’m affecting my actions. One thing I notice that I do constantly is turn the lights on and off, like some sort of musical score of pauses and notes.

Question: I wonder is it better to leave the light one constant (if its a low power bulb) than to constantly turn it on and off in a short about of time?

Light in Art

I always come back to art when feeling ‘lost in information’. Artists have a great way of describing visually (and usually surprisingly simply) complex theories. Maybe my four year Fine Art degree was not totally wasted? My mind keeps drawing back to the time I visited the Venice Biennale in 2009. One of my favourite pieces was Chu Yun’s “Constellation No. 3″.

In the piece, you walk through a black-out curtain in to a room of almost 100% darkness apart from what tens of tiny lights, some flashing, all different colours. There is also this quiet hum of electricity. The first reaction I had was that it looked like star-scape, something seen in a clear night’s sky. As your eyes adjust to the light the objects behind them become clearer – they are actually various televisions, dvd players, fridges, radios etc. The lights you’re seeing are actually the little standby bulbs, all switched on waiting to be activated. Its like the machines are all in a state of stasis, ready to react and start in to action but being held somewhere in between.

source: https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/venice-biennale-flashing-lights/

I’m not sure if the piece was directly about energy consumption, but I think its an unavoidable association once you realise the extent of machinery in the room and how much of it you potentially have in your own house.

Question: Since the advent of ‘Smart TVs’ and the Internet of Things have we become worse at switching things off? I remember having an old analog TV years ago in my family house and it not having any sort of ‘standby’ mode, you had to physically get up and switch it on or off. Now with the IoT, objects are constantly on and gathering data – I must check some of the energy consumption information of these devices when they are in standby but processing data in the background.

Bruce Nauman

Now I can’t talk about light in art without mentioning Bruce Nauman’s neon signs and light installations. His work is usually about forcing the viewer in to new experiential spaces and mind sets. Its about de-stabilising what we consider a normal association – i.e. the normal process or relationship of A to B – and making the viewer realise its all rather arbitrary and subjective. Nothing is definite or ‘set in stone’, everything is changeable in ones interaction with it.

Now this certainly doesn’t relate directly to energy consumption but (stay with me!) it does conceptually parallel the types of reaction I want to instil in the players of my game. I want them to experience the game and have it change the way they react to the space they live in. To realise that their actions will have an effect and that its worth being more conscious about the actions they take. Its rather convenient that Bruce manages to do this using light, exactly one of the consumption elements I’d like to tackle.