Royal Phillips (you know, Phillips - the company that makes lamps) has a bunch of new technologies geared towards green living, “simplicity,” and sustainability.  Inspired by a post at Inhabitat about Phillips’ Interactive LED Light Bulb, I started researching their new line of “Simplicity” branded stuff.  I must say, holy crap.  The basis for their new technology is making the alteration of lighting levels in your house as easy as the flick of a hand or simple gestures.

First, check out the isocahedron shaped Simplicity LED lamps:

This is hand-controlled.  It senses movement.

I also found this video of the SImplicity Demo Event in NYC:

The whole mantry around the Simplicity technology and products is that they’re engineered and designed around you, easy to operate, and advanced.  I’m impressed.

Ok, so for this week’s WYSIWYG post, I wanted to share a little up-and-coming information on the next release of WYSIWYG, R23.  There are some amazing things coming up in the new release of the software, and they are some of the exact items that many of us have requested over the years.

I had a great long conversation with Gil Densham this week on the phone about the stuff coming up - if I may say so myself, there are some amazing new technologies coming out soon, and others in heavy hardcore development.  There will be posts about these in the future - what was astonishing from my conversation with Gil this week was how involved Cast Lighting is in the process, and how they’ve pioneered and made important solving some of the challenges that our creative brains have created in the advent of new technology.

This week, I want to start chronicling the new additions to the R23 build of WYSIWYG.  For a long time there has been desire to have live control and output in the Live Beam Visualizer of optical focus - gobos on surfaces, shafts of light through the air from a breakup gobo exhibiting a hard and soft appearance when being run through an effect, etc.  R23 has this in the bag, and this is extremely exciting!  Imagine being able to exhibit a nice slightly over-focused pattern wash on a wall or piece of scenery, or show a client a focus effect across a truss.  It’s coming.  Check out the image below:

This image shows a template being projected onto a sphere in the foreground, and spilling onto a wall in the background.  New to R23 will be the ability to control the focus as it hits two distant surfaces and render it realtime.  Well, kiss my grits.  Check out the other side of the focus below, sharp on the sphere and out of focus on the wall:

Amazing.  Have a great weekend, everyone!

Funny enough, after writing the post about Sustainable Dance Clubs, I found an article from Interactive Architecture about the kinetic dance floors used in places like Club Watt and the new place opening up in London (King’s Cross, actually).

The floors are equipped with a spring mount system that operate a piezoelectric block, sending the power to batteries used to power whatever it’s connected to, in this case, the LED dance floor.

In researching about the Sustainable Dance Club concept, I discovered an article by Inhabitat about a series of dance club installations in Germany and Spain called Kubik.  These temporary dance club venues were outdoor installations created by lighting up reclaimed industrial tanks and fusing them into a melding of architecture, music, and lighting.

You definitely need to check out the project pages - Kubik had installations in Berlin, Barcelona, and Lisbon.  These were all “green” (environmentally friendly) and temporary, and apparently a big hit.

Inhabitat has an article about the first Sustainable Dance Club that opened in Rotterdam, called Club Watt.  Club Watt features an LED dance floor that is powered by the kinetic energy the dancers generate, and has other

elements of sustainability set forth by the Sustainable Dance Club group.

How does a dance club become a part of this group?

To qualify as a Sustainable Dance Club™ your club must reach a certain level of sustainability as defined by the 5 SDC™ guidelines:
- 30% less environmental impact than average clubs
- Sustainability integrated in both building and organisation
- Installation of 3 SDC™ spectaculars that show sustainability to the public (Sustainable Dance Floor, Zero Waste Bar, Waterwall)
- Communication plan on how to inform the public about sustainability
- Sustainable business plan with yearly targets and evaluation

I posted an article about the SeaChanger color engine for ETC Source Four Profiles a few days ago, and I wanted to post about one of the other accessories that is available from SeaChanger - the SeaChanger Wash Color Engine.

All you need for this accessory is the lamp base housing - that’s what makes it awesome.  The SeaChanger Wash Color Engine basically turns the Source Four lamp housing into a color mixing fresnel, with all of the same dichroic guts as the Profile color engine.  The wash barrel on the unit has a 20° to 70° zoomable beam spread, which again turns this unit into a little bit of awesome.

The next show that I spec these on, I will take a lot of pictures of the unit.  In the mean time, check out SeaChanger’s product page on this device.

One of the writers for the Yanko Design blog, Billy May, created a series of sort-of wall-integrated LED lighting fixtures - referred to as “torn lighting,” they blur the edge between structure and fixture.  I love the description on the site:  Anyone who has spent a significant period of time either living in a
small windowless apartment or tripping through the galaxy on a mind
bender may have at one point felt the urge to tear a hole in the wall
to let some light in.

Torn Lighting

How freaking cool is THAT?!  A little cell-powered light source, small enough to fit in your wallet.  When you flip up the “bulb” in the middle, a nice amber glow emanates from the “fixture.”  This was designed by Hyun Jin Yoon and Eun Hak Lee.

Cool.  Thanks, Yanko Design!

Barco, the Belgian company that just bought High End Systems, has been given some pretty big props by Millitary Training Technology folk.  Barco is a major world leader in visual and simulation technology, and they’ve been making visual breakthroughs all over the industry lately in video and display technology.  From the article:

Barco was awarded the status as top simulation and training company as “world leader in high-performance, high-quality display systems for simulation training applications.” Barco’s systems include its SIM 7 projector series, which has been specifically designed for multi-channel simulation setups, and boasts features such as smear reduction and high dynamic contrast. It is currently being used in Barco’s SEER mini-domes for fast jet and helicopter training, and its new cross-cockpit collimated display (CCCD) for dual-cockpit training. Its systems are exceptional in that Barco designs and calibrates not just the projectors, but also the screens and mechanical structures. This leads to a greater degree of internal system harmony, and makes servicing easier for both Barco and its customers.

This just goes to show you how widely spread the entertainment market in lighting really is.

Simon Newton, of the website http://www.nomis52.net, has instructions on his site about creating his homebrewed effect fixture.  It basically looks like a little scanner, complete with color wheel and internal cooling.

Check out the project page at Simon’s site.  Awesome project, Simon!