BJDW 2011 daily blog: day 4, part 2
Open Light - by Cassandra Pizzey
What do you get when you bring together six Chinese and eight Dutch students in China, and ask them to create a number of site-specific light installations within a two-week period? Why, the Open Light project of course.
Three large cylinders located within Dutch Design Generator were the scene for the project which aimed to look at and improve the life of Beijing inhabitants. For a period of two weeks, the students followed a number of Chinese people with different social backgrounds. How do they live and interact with light, and what cultural differences can we discover?
"It was a cultural meeting of minds," explains Jacob Alkema of TU Eindhoven. "All your preconceived ideas vanish once you start interacting with the Chinese students. We noticed quite some differences between the students, at the TU we try to educate the students in a broad spectrum, at Tsinghua there is more of a master-student construction."
"It was a completely new experience for me," says Summer Zhong of Tsinghua University. "We have such different cultures and ways of working. I noticed that Dutch students work with prototypes, whereas Chinese students focus more on on the thought process of a project. I learned to practice, practice, practice, and I think the Dutch students learned to talk more."
"We definitely each have different qualities," agrees Fiona Jongejans from TU Eindhoven. "The Dutch are pretty abstract, the Chinese much more practical. Working on a project in such a tight timeframe forces you to have a good collaboration though."
The three projects focus respectively on the welfare of Chinese migrants who live and work in Beijing, yet are treated as second-class citizens, the somewhat disorientating installation aims to give these worker's a voice; the high-pressure way of life faced by most Chinese inhabitants and how light could help them relax, the interactive piece emits calming blue light when people are quiet and still, yet flashes bright lights when they move around or talk; the third project looks at a typical lower-class family which uses one 12-watt lightbulb in their house, this installation shows how different moods can be created using variations on the 12-watt theme.
Open light is a project by Intelligent lighting institute, TU Eindhoven and Tsinghua University in cooperation with DutchDFA and funding from Brainport Eindhoven.
Read the other reports from Bejing here:
- Live report BJDW Day #1, Opening
- Live report BJDW Day #2, part 1
- Live report BJDW Day #2, part 2
- Live report BJDW Day #2, part 3
- Live report BJDW Day #3, part 1
- Live report BJDW Day #3, part 2
- Live report BJDW Day #4, part 1
- Live report BJDW Day #4, part 2
