There is a time of year when the short days, hours of travel (this time over some 8000 km in the air), and holiday season make me want to post silly, insubstantial things. This is one of those posts.
But, let me make some attempt at profundity:
1. Microcontrollers have put interactive lighting in the hands of even the festive home decorator. It’s true. (the rig here is “two computers and 10 Light-o-rama 16 channel controllers”)
2. Consider, ye who make mobile designs, the profound cultural impact these things have. Once reserved for blockbuster movies, and before that the spoken fairy tales and lore sung over campfires, uh … sorry, I’m getting carried away. Yeah, these “apps” are sure huge. Next:
3. The most interesting detail here to me is this: the creator says each game costs less than one cent of electricity. Massive electrical bills are usually the punchline when looking at projects like this. But LED lighting really is the future.
And that third point is the big one. Having just flown back and forth over the planet too many times, I’m certainly not helping stem the tide of global warming (so to speak). But the LED-laden future of lighting may be a bright one for the environment, and for visualists, one in which lumens cost less in environmental impact and electricity consumption.
With 20,000 lights in this rig, that’s no small matter. There’s been nothing short of a quiet revolution in lighting, and it means that for those of us who work with light as a medium, the future gets better, rather than worse.
And that makes me feel warmer this holiday season than anything else. Let there be light.