Day three of Showlight 2025, Thursday March 22, got underway with two sessions moderated by James Simpson. The first of these featured lighting designer David Duffy on "A Solstice Adventure at The End of the Inhabitable World," a humorous and informative insight into producing a site-specific piece — A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings — in an Icelandic meat-packing plant. He discovered that everything on the island operates through "inter-connectivity and trust," which they certainly needed in bringing their suitcase full of puppets in their desire to bring culture to a remote community. With sets made out of ingenuity (for a show originally lit by UK LD Malcolm Rippeth), the end result was successfully creating a performance with next to nothing, and against all odds.
The second presentation was by LD Lucy Carter, who spoke about "Rhythm is a dancer — so is light." With beautiful images of her work, the two-time Knights of Illumination Award-winner notes that her interest in lighting stemmed from her interst in choreography, considering lighting as a co-performer with the dancers. From themes to feelings, she defines the functions of light as a result of her research and her enjoyment of the collaborative process, as she likes to be involved from the get-go on every project. She establishes the core concepts for her lighting design, then researches for visual references, then attacks the technical aspects, and how to create the world for the work."Light is a feeling, a force that enters the space," Carter says. "It should bit just stimulate the eye, but impact the audience." For this designer, the choice of equipment or the cleverness of the tech is not the most important thing: she is more interested in the use of choreographic tools — tempo, planes, size, rhythm — in creating the lighting.
Jess Allen moderated the pre-lunch troika of presentations, the first of which featured Martin Kuhn of MKLD Lighting Design & Consulting and his tale of "The Maiden Tower Istanbul - Lighting and Beyond." The goal was to create a light show emanating from the iconic and historic tower which dates back to the 15th century and sits in Turkey's Bosphorus Strait as a symbol of Istanbul's past and present. The tower measures 28 meters tall — compared to the Eiffel Tower at more than 300 meters tall — and the end result is a light, laser, and projection show that tells the story of the tower in images (the verbal narrative was scrapped at the last minute), with exterior lighting highlighting the stony surface of the tower walls. People line the shores to see the show, which debuted in 2023, and was created using a 3D model created in Depence R3 and MA Lighting grandMA3 software, plus an array of Ayrton Cobra fixtures.
Next up was Frederic "Aldo" Fayard of ConceptK, who also lit a tower, this time the Burj Khafila for New Year's Eve in Dubai... a tower that towers over those in Istanbul and Paris at 830 meters tall. Here the creative team met with numerous restrictions — size and distance, the environment, network, synchronization, and show control, and time, the biggest challenge of all. The height of the tower required negotiations with the local civil aviation authorities. The New Year's Eve show employs up to 250 moving lights, 30-60 lasers (the numbers vary year to year), fountain shows, LED screens, and grandMA consoles. The installation begins on November 1, allowing two months of install and programming til showtime.
Danish LD Jesper Kongshaug took us "Beyond Illumination: The Experimental Language of Light in Performance and Public Spaces," as he talked about his work for the Copenhagen Light Festival as well as his collaborations with a performance art group called Hotel Pro Forma, which was led by Kirsten Dehlholm, who sadly passed away last year. Large, dramatic set pieces, such as a large staircase lit with sodium-pressure sources for Orfeo, or a new way of telling the story of Parsifal in bold colors, define Kongshaug's lighting, including operas in Budapest, Brussels, Malmo.... as well as his lighting in public spaces, as he adds color and human emotion to draw in the audience, from the streets to the stage.
I was unable to stay for the afternoon sessions but by all reports, Showlight 2025 finished on a high note. There were more American speakers and attendees in the past, most discovering this quadrennial event for the first time and thoroughly enjoying the experience. And everyone is already asking that all important question... where will the next Showlight be in 2029?
Check out Live Design's coverage of Showlight 2025.