This week’s inspiration piece may be seen as a little personal, but hey, inspiration is an inspiration!
Anyone who saw David Gilbey speak at Light Middle East a couple of weeks ago on Light Art and The Rise of the Light Festival will now know of his love of jellyfish, they are joyous creatures that lend themselves so readily to light art and in his opinion, there is no more enjoyable sight than giant illuminated jellyfish at a light art festival.
David put forward an inspiring argument that lighting designers are also in many cases light artists, the only difference being the context of the project, whereas with a light artist, it is art for art’s sake, lighting designers are confined to their art pieces to the relevance within the space. In truth, such is his love of illuminated jellyfish, David would happily include a jellyfish on every project, although he realizes that unless the project is a fish shop, a scuba operator, or an aquarium this is not going to happen!
David would love to create the ‘ultimate’ light art jellyfish and on hearing about Targetti’s Light Art collection was almost ‘fishing’ for a commission with Luca M. Valdrighi their International Specification Manager and later went on to discuss the possibility of other aquatic light art to accompany the jellyfish, bad boy.
They are just such a great shape with the mass of the body and the tentacles that drift and sway, they can be as giant as you like, alien jellyfish, a mass of smaller jellyfish, dancing jellyfish, people in jellyfish costumes, really, what is not to like.
David is an avid swimmer and scuba diver and has been stung by jellyfish, he doesn’t hold it against them, he is in their world, it is not as though they stung him on Camden High Street, but this has given him the opportunity to witness them and be inspired by them in their natural environment to see them at night with their bioluminescence and appreciate them for their pure and simple beauty.
It seems that in this love of jellyfish and jellyfish art, David is not alone, in this regard he has already put a top JF team together in the hopes of scoring a light art commission when the people see it, they are going to use the infamous words from the movie Jaws, ‘we’re going to need a bigger boat’!
