Output details

Lighting on the hyperbolic plane: Towards a new approach to controlling light on the theatre stage

Lighting control systems for the theatre are generally based on the ‘state/cue’ model, in which static snapshot lighting pictures or ‘states’ replace one another at various cue points through the duration of the performance. This way of structuring lighting (and the data that represents it in the control system) derives historically from the ‘preset’ lighting boards that came to dominate the design of lighting controls in the UK during the post-war period. The same conceptual structure is now almost universal in current computerised controls intended for theatre use worldwide.

In the article Hunt argues that the data model used to represent the lighting within the ‘state/cue’ conception is one based on a geometry of straight lines and grids that privileges the static over the dynamic, the synchronic over the diachronic, which has consequences for the expressive potential of light on stage: the design of the tool shapes the kind of artistic work that can be made. Hunt goes on to propose an alternative data model structured by an alternative aesthetic logic, inspired by the geometry of hyperbolic planes and the mathematical concept of state-spaces. In this ‘thread/impulse’ model aesthetic units of light (‘threads’) have a continuous existence throughout the performance, and are brought into play and rebalanced and recombined at the ‘impulse’ of the lighting artist, responding and contributing to the unfolding stage action. The model is intended to promote the lighting artist’s engagement with the temporal dimension of light on stage, and with the immediacy and specificity of the performance moment. Hunt’s proposed reform also has implications for other theatre-making practices and personnel (including lighting designers and operators, actors, directors and indeed audiences) that he outlines.