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ART & DESIGN / EVENT
A LITTLE LIGHT HACKING
The aim of the ‘Make Some Lights’ event is to bring the original ideals of the ‘hacker philosophy’ into the lighting industry in the hopes of finding a new source of inspiration.
Despite the off-colour present day con- notations that surround hackers, images of shady characters lurking in basements trying to break into the Pentagon’s secu- rity systems or spamming Goldman Sachs, the origins of this pursuit were born out of aspirational ideals, with the intention of bettering society through cooperation. The roots of hacking lie in the 1950’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a group of like-minded computer stu- dents, who enjoyed finding creative, play- ful, and innovative solutions to problems, joined forces to attempt to solve them. They believed hacking to be a state of mind that seeks excellence and pushes bound- aries and based their movement upon the principles of sharing, openness and freedom of information. They believed the sharing of knowledge to be the basis for the develop- ment of new ideas, prompting the speeding up of the problem solving process, allowing procedure to happen at the fastest possible rate; a free exchange of information allow- ing the greatest possibility for creativity. The aim of the Make Some Lights event,
organised by Light Collective, is to bring the ‘hacking philosophy’ into the lighting industry in the hope of finding a new source of inspiration and bettering levels of inno- vation.
The basic idea at the core of the movement concerns the ability to take something apart and learn how it works, before going on to improve it. This approach led to the estab- lishment of ‘Hardware Hacking’, which blurs the boundaries of inventing and electronic engineering, drawing on a long history of invention, DIY and shed tinkering. Recent years has seen the development of a new name for hardware modification ‘the maker movement’. Keeping the same core beliefs of the original hackers has helped the movement expand rapidly, creating massive online communities and sites like ‘Instructa- ble’, which offers a forum for people to showcase new creations and invention. The last four years have seen a progressive shift towards LEDs becoming the pre- dominant source of light for the future. The side effect of this is that the lighting industry has been largely transformed into a
semi-conductor industry. This has creat- ed the opportunity for many electronics companies such as Samsung and Toshiba to gain entrance to the lighting market. This change also allows the lighting industry to tap into the resources of the electronics industry.
The explosion of the ‘maker movement’ has in part been caused by the development of cheap computer components. Technology that a few years ago was cutting edge has now become an off the shelf consumer product that costs little. LEDs are also continuing to decrease in price and are now widely available to purchase for as little as three pence or cents per LED. All of these factors contribute to allowing easy and cost effective creation of new individual LED lighting products without the need for traditional manufacturing infrastructure in lighting. The shift towards LED lighting has made obsolete much of the traditional knowledge base of the lighting industry and replaced it with a technology that is unfamiliar.
The common perception of LEDs amongst
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