GigaTera prototype wall lamp

Last week I traveled to Philadelphia to attend Lightfair International 2011, a huge lighting conference featuring an immense trade show floor and a full schedule of lighting-related seminars.

While there, I was guest blogging for Philips’ LightCommunity on their new Events blog.  My first post focused on advancements in LED street lighting, my next post discussed issues surrounding general LED lighting in the home and summarized the keynote by Ingo Maurer, and my wrap-up post captured my impressions of the trade show floor.

Since the majority of the conference is focused on technical learning and driving product sales in the architecture, retail, and commercial sectors, there isn’t too much to take in from an artistic standpoint.  I was pleased, however, to attend a refreshing and inpiring seminar by Leni Schwendinger about her public lighitng projects.

As I see it, the increase in 1% for art programs coupled with the continual advancement of LED architectural lighting is a sure fire recipe for more exciting public lighting projects, so I hope to see greater emphasis on public lighting projects by events like Lightfair International.

For a detailed account of all the various projects I worked on this past summer during my residency at NYC Resistor, I invite you to check out this post I did for their blog.

Head on over to the Artengine blog for a post touring NYCResistor where I was “hacker/artist in residence” this summer!

It already feels like I have more projects than the time to complete them   I’ve secured an “artist in residency” position with NYC Resistor, where I have open access to their space, including all the electronics tools I’ll need along with some cool fabrication tools, including a laser cutter.

[ more after the break ]

While here, I’m planning to work on the software for the upcoming light cube:

along with developing an open-source clock kit around the Electric Window 3 platform:

including a nifty enclosure fabbed on the laser cutter, or perhaps even the Makerbot, which will be aided by the convenience of Makerbot Industries and NYC Resistor being neighbors in the same building:

In addition to my self-guided residency at NYC Resistor, I’ll also be interning at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in the Chelsea district of Manhattan:

[ pic from Flickr ]

At Eyebeam, I’ll be working with Hernani Dias, developing new hardware for his Refarm the City project.  A large portion of his project revolves around series of electronic boards which are responsible for monitoring and automatically feeding small urban farms (gardens).

[ pic from Hernani's blog ]

Specifically, I’ll be working on a board which visualizes data collected from a farm/garden with a reconfigurable LED display; the main idea being the ability to monitor data remotely without having to use a computer — a great overlap with my personal lighting projects which I’ve been long wanting to make internet-enabled.

And what of DJ/VJ’ing you may ask?  Well, Deb is here in NYC with me, and we indeed have a few things lined up.  The first being a performance this Saturday, July 17, at Disorient’s Compressor VI event.

So much to do, so little time . . . literally!

On Friday evening, Artengine’s new media Nite Ride exhibition opened, and I got to enjoy the first ride of the night, listening to Tim Hecker’s custom 5.1 channel surround soundtrack to a drive through the Gatineau Hills.

Guerilla mag has a great video from opening night that gives you a much better sense of the project than my prose:

Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to go on the next ride for Marla Hlady’s work, but I’ll be back during the week, as Nite Ride runs until Oct. 31.

We had to leave the Nite Ride opening early as Deb and I had to set up for our DJ/VJ performance as The Latest Artists at Lotus Lounge in Ottawa later that night. We were booked by Exposure Fridays for their Halloween-themed party, and were excited to share another bill w/ Kevan Fraser.

With only an hour set time, we went straight to business with dark, rolling, minimal-tech tunes accompanied by synced, abstract and spooky-themed video — our specialty Not sure if we’ll get any documentation from this one, though, but we received lots of great feedback after our set.

Again we had to leave early to prepare for another commitment the next morning:

The Conjunction Collective’s exhibition, Civilization and its Discontents, opening on Saturday eve. in Toronto, for which I still needed to install my light portion of the show.

The organisers gave me free reign of the gallery basement for my lighting work, so I reprogrammed and refurbished a handful of pieces to display in the space.

Installation went really smooth thanks to dedicated assistance from Deb and my good friend, Dan. The opening party was a blast, and I received lots of positive feedback about my lighting work, which was really encouraging to hear from a Toronto crowd since it was my first lighting exhibition there.

Deb got lots of great documentation that I’ll share soon, but in the meantime, I invite you to check out this photo set by co-organiser, Jen Lee.

Deb and I are headed out west from Ottawa all the way to Vancouver for a summer DJ/VJ performance and workshop tour as The Latest Artists!

All the info, dates, and documentation (pics and vids) will be available on our new fan page on Facebook. Check it out and follow along!

Happy summer!