on ambient light - augustobastosr 2010

ON AMBIENT

LIGHT

RELATINGour COLOUR

PERCEPTION andthe PHENOMENOLOGY ofthe PERCEIVED LIGHT

TOGETHER - an essay

School of Technology and Health by Augusto Bastos R. Lighting Laboratory – 2010

Degree of Master of Science Tutor: Katja BullowArchitectural Lighting Design (HS200X) Consultant: Anders Liljefors

This paper has been written during the first half of 2010, and has been submitted as the final paper for concluding the Master of Science Degree in Architectural Lighting Design at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan – Stockholm.

Regardless of the purely academic aim of the paper, consideration was taken in order to write a text that would appeal to anyone curious about the topics discussed here.In this way, the reader will clearly identify that the main topic, while revolving around “light” itself, spreads to a considerable number of topics directly related to it.I hope that this fact makes this essay appealing not only to readers dealing with lighting design or the visual arts professionally, but also to the general inquisitive mind.

Many thanks go out to friends and family, they know who they are;Katja and Anders for their inputs in the early writing process;And finally, to the people at STH Lighting Laboratory for the support and opportunity of making this paper possible.

http://www.kth.se/

Abstract

The paper addresses some questions that have pertinence in the lighting design field, chiefly related

to light and perception. A historic background is presented as a foundation for all the assertions made and a

more developed background on four specific authors (Goethe, Steiner, Gibson and Merleau-Ponty) is

offered as a launching point for several proposals pertaining to the process of designing and the designer's

attitude towards his/her functions.

A huge constraint to the process of lighting design has been identified with the limitations

associated with the term “light” and various common misconceptions regarding “what it is” and

consequently “how to use it”. Dealing with these problems was the aim and motivation for seeing this paper

through, furthermore, clearing up “what light is” (for us) proved to be the stepping stone for all subsequent

findings.

In the course of the paper it will be finally established the role of ambient lighting for the lighting

designer and for the beneficiaries of lighting; how light is to be understood from a phenomenological

perspective with direct and indirect, of short or long term, repercussions and how is the lighting designer

supposed to achieve determinate effects with a given lighting design, or, on the other hand, how do the

beneficiaries find, experience and allocate value to a lighting designed environment. Some key concepts in

order to aid with these questions will be proposed, namely the Perceptual Scaling present in Ambient Light,

the Phenomenological Capabilities in Light and the Three I's of Steiner, which are introduced here as the

Vectorial Tools for the Development of a Personal Method, the tools for a lighting devised to our human

scale.

Preface vii

Preface

Lighting has been properly invented several thousands of years ago, but only very recently has

it been reinvented to become, on one hand, a methodical/rational exercise and, on the other hand, a

creative/intuitive exercise, thus resulting in a conflicting design process that is not efficient to the

extent that it does not serve the best interest of the lighting designer and of the beneficiaries of lighting

– we all.

For the lighting design exercise to become a fluent practice there should be two avenues of

knowledge always present in a lighting designer's mind: the technical knowledge and the consequential

knowledge; being the first, the one you use to materialize, and the second, the one you use to know

what to materialize. This paper will try to deal with the latter, as it has been a true apprehension of

mine the fact that the overwhelming pouring of technical knowledge supersedes the need for more

consequential knowledge in this field.

The paper will have at its core the aim to supply the lighting design professional with an

immediate frame of mind that encompasses the complexity of the exercise of lighting, and that will

enable us to deal with the challenges of our field with an honest, humble and wise posture. In doing so,

this paper led me down the path of prior works of mine that explored an alternative view towards the

lighting world, fuelled even more by my long academic career in this field of knowledge. Seeking this

alternate path is a matter of personal interest towards a specific personal development, one which has

Preface viii

already enabled me with a determined attitude and has, concordantly, led me to pursue specific

practices. The challenge here was, then, to convey into words what were already my intuitions and,

with the hope to better understand them, the excuse for launching this argumentative exercise of a

personal nature was presented to me. This is the ultimate reason why this paper has to be qualified as

an essay, in that it expresses rigorously my opinions regarding specific topics.

A premeditated strategy for conveying my thoughts into words was to look back at the cultural

history of light, in it we find how we are presently repeating past mistakes. Understanding where we

came from especially helps in putting the present into perspective. Along the lines of a historic

retrospective, the core views supporting my opinions will be presented, starting with Goethe, then

Steiner, Gibson and finally Merleau-Ponty. These views provide a crucial input for anyone working

with light and colour, and they have also provided me with arguments to support my own view. Their

hypothesis had to be presented and sewn up in a rather summarised way that is far from extensive, but

I trust that they will be self sufficient in the clarification of where each author stands; although, a more

thorough and complete knowledge on their works is always recommended. From discussing and

combining the views associated to each of these authors a new lexicon, a set of new terms and concepts

will emerge as a requirement for presenting the final portion of the paper.

It is curious how I have resorted to authors that in any way were professionally connected to

the field of lighting design. Books on Lighting Design disappointedly present a very narrow scope of

topics. I steered away from anything related to these formats for I maintain an essential relationship

Preface ix

with light, and it is the nature of this relationship that I have tried to describe in the course of this

paper. Because this relationship is not circumscribed by or limited to a professional practice, several

topics have found their way of being included in this discussion. Some of them being the problematic

regarding “light” itself, the term and the visual or physical “substance”; at what levels do we relate to

light and the impact that it actually has in our lives; and how the lighting designer shall approach these

levels in pursuing a lighting design made to our human scale.

Ambient light has been found to be connected to all of those questions, as the perfect substrate

for any lighting design to be built upon, and this is the main reason for the title of this paper;

something that I had not anticipated right at the beginning of the process. This is to me, however, what

defines this kind of academic work, and above all, one of an essayistic nature, the contingency that

after a certain moment it is the paper that starts writing your thoughts and not the other way around.

You transform and evolve with the writing of the paper, in other words you effectively learn by

yourself. As much as any transmission of knowledge should be considered valuable, there is nothing

that can replace the operation of those transformations in you, nothing can replace the actual creation

of knowledge.

I do not ascertain that the paper will extinguish itself in itself, or better yet, I certainly hope it

won't. Keeping this in mind, I humbly submit this work to the discernment of the reader, only hoping

that, if anything, this paper is just a starting point for persecuting your own quests and your own

creations of knowledge regarding light and lighting.

Contents xi

Contents

CHAPTER ONEThe Architecture as Living Space.......................................................... 01

CHAPTER TWOA Brief Introduction to the Cultural History of Light................................... 06

Classic Age....................................................................................... 07Middle Age....................................................................................... 09Enlightenment.................................................................................. 10Modern Age...................................................................................... 13Contemporaneity............................................................................... 18Conclusions Pertaining to Our Received View.............................................. 23

CHAPTER THREEOn Goethe's Colour Theory.................................................................. 28

Light as Living Colour.......................................................................... 29A Revolutionary Attitude...................................................................... 30Goethe's Legacy................................................................................. 35

CHAPTER FOUROn Steiner's Spiritual Colour................................................................ 38

On Steiner and Anthroposophy................................................................39Steiner's Anthroposophical View..............................................................42Sense and Sensibility........................................................................... 47

Contents xii

CHAPTER FIVEOn Gibson's Ecological Light.................................................................51

The Fallacy of Camera Vision.................................................................54The Environment Unfolding................................................................... 56The Structure of the Ambient Optic Array.................................................. 59The Affordance Theory........................................................................ 60

CHAPTER SIXThe Correlations with Phenomenology................................................... 63

Phenomenology Before Phenomenology..................................................... 64Convergences and Divergences...............................................................66

CHAPTER SEVENThe “I” in Light................................................................................ 71

Physical Versus Visual.......................................................................... 71Subjective Versus Objective.................................................................. 74The Light United................................................................................76

CHAPTER EIGHTThe Processes of Positioning and of Revealing.......................................... 83

Towards Revealing.............................................................................. 83Towards Positioning............................................................................ 85Real World Examples........................................................................... 87

Contents xiii

CHAPTER NINEAmbient Lighting for the Conscientious Designer...................................... 90

The Occurrence of Lighting and of Ambient Lighting..................................... 91The Perceptual Scaling Ability................................................................ 95

CHAPTER TENThe Phenomenology of the Perceived Light............................................. 99

Introducing the PCiL........................................................................... 100On the Visual PCiL and Its Effects........................................................... 103On the Mood PCiL and Its Effects............................................................ 106On the Well Being PCiL and Its Effects...................................................... 109On the Recursive PCiL and Its Effects....................................................... 112

CHAPTER ELEVENOn Method...................................................................................... 115

Lighting to the Human Scale..................................................................115Vectorial Tools for a Personal Method....................................................... 118Final Thoughts on Lighting Methods and Practices........................................ 121

Bibliography and Recommend Readings.................................................. 125

It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis.

Luis Barragan

Chapter One Page 1

Chapter One

▪ The Architecture as Living Space

Not being an architect myself, my relationship with architecture is very truthful and

“grounded”, thus I only credit its ability and competence in defining a new environment that transmits

feelings while shaping a specific space.

It is granted that the nature of this relationship is less specific than an architect's one, but it is

also a relationship of someone who uses architecture regularly to different extents and, on a third

degree, of someone who “completes” the environment by lighting it up, thus also creating “perceptual

space”. Because all these degrees are equally important to the outcome of the whole environmental

experience I wish to address each of them.

Adolphe Appia is mostly known for being a theatrical director and theorist, and in one of his

many studies of the so called “fine arts” for his work L'Oeuvre d'Art Vivant (“The Living Work of Art”,

1921), he tries to justify the status and validity of theatre as a living form of art. The fact that theatre

tries to capture the essence of several different art forms, combining them together and aiming for a

sublime hypotheses in relation to everyday life makes it a good tool for understanding the role of each

of those art forms.

Architecture is the art of grouping masses in the direction of their gravity; gravity is

its [architecture's] aesthetic principle; to express gravity in a harmonious fashion, measured

The Architecture as Living Space Page 2

to the scale of the living human body and destined to support the mobility of that body, is the

supreme objective of architecture.

(Appia, 1921: 16)

Naturally, an architect is more of an artist than a designer or a technician, although, also

naturally, nowadays it should be a bit of all at the same time. Yet, I still I feel that this view or

assumption of architecture as a form of art has become somewhat old fashioned, or in some cases it

became a distorted view over art and over architecture. This is not that surprising for I suppose that

most architects spend more time performing technical tasks by their computers than actually

envisioning “the gravity of masses”. Ergo, one can understand that many architectural pieces were not

conceived to be inhabited, especially in what concerns post-modern and contemporary architectural

designs. Some of these pieces look like they were especially made to exist without people or to look

good in a photograph, for inhabiting them suddenly feels very anti-natural.

The architecture that exceeds, in dimensions, a scale that is functional to our

presence, always departs from its artistic function, until it completely neglects it.

(Appia, 1921: 20)

Of course architecture also has an aesthetic side to it and it seems that architects are currently

exercising architecture more along these aesthetic guide lines; probably this accentuates what Appia

was mentioning of not creating spaces for the human scale.

Chapter One Page 3

The aesthetics of an architectural piece should always be a consequence of other priorities,

because it is something merely perceptual, and thus always subjective and mutable. What is more

pertinent than this is how the built environment is able to accommodate its users, and this faculty is

not dependent on vision alone. Much in the vein of recent architectural theories, like the one being

supported by architect and theorist Juhani Pallasmaa, which are more in tune with older architectural

theories, architecture should appeal to all senses at once because in itself architecture is an intervention

upon the environment and not an addition to it. Only in that way can architecture be at the same time

“art” and “environment”. An architectural piece whose function is that of being contemplated,

manifests its appearance as an exercise of design, not as an exercise of art.

A work of art is always meaningful because it is no more and no less than an intervention

upon the “natural reality”, or as I prefer to put it, upon the environment, it is always lived and

“enjoyed”. Art's function is not that of being the target of contemplation. In fact, architecture, as an art

form, could be defined, following Appia, as the creation of human environments, intervening on the

environment itself:

Architecture is the art of creating determined and circumscribed spaces. It is a

realistic art... it contains space by definition, and time on its application, therefore becoming

the most favoured of the fine arts.

(Appia, 1921: 17-18)

Of course, here I would advocate that, by association or implication, this could be said about

The Architecture as Living Space Page 4

lighting as well, only in the acception that we live the space and environment perceived.

Architecture is very much dependent on the ambient light, for the environment perceived,

including architecture itself, will change greatly depending on the installed ambient light 1. I believe

that this is fairly consensual and doesn't need much more discussing, but what I wanted to introduce

here is the notion that is ultimately connected to all the other concepts and notions presented here in

this essay, the notion of “lighting to the human scale”.

Personally, this is what I strive for in lighting. The use of lighting, be it from a natural source,

or be it from an artificial source, should be a component of the environment that is in consonance with

the other environmental components. Furthermore, if the architecture is done to the human scale,

lighting by being in tune with the architecture, should automatically be in tune with us, and devised to

our own scale. It should prove very difficult to feel comfortable in a luminous environment that was

not built to our scale, and these appear more often than rarely, with many of those even being a bit

aggressive.

What is then, this “human light scale”? It is the scale of our perceptual visual capability, and so,

it is also the scale of our soul and spirit, implicated by visual perception, and with it the percussions

and repercussions of this in the soul and to a spiritual level, which, for the ambitions of this essay,

associate light with mood and well-being.

As a user of architecture, I am constantly concerned about the quality of the environment set.

1 By installed ambient light we mean the ambient light present at a given space, generally indoors, resulting from the interaction of the built environment with ambient light present outside, in this case. More on this in Chapter Nine.

Chapter One Page 5

Even if I could value aesthetically impacting works, such as the Casa da Música, music hall in Porto;

the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, also in Porto; or the typical residential dwellings in

Porto's old down town quarters, what remains important is the architecture in the whole, as a set

environment, which favours a certain ambient or atmosphere, and induces the users to feel in a certain

mood. Obviously, here, the aesthetic value in architecture also takes part but not in a contemplative

sort of way of such prominent feature, but once again, as a particularity of a specific built environment.

We cannot adopt a holistic posture regarding architecture and lighting, if we keep this holistic

posture restricted to specific contexts, in order to become more technical or more stylish on other

contexts. This, to my view, is the complete anathema on making and experiencing lighting and

architecture. This holistic approach that is so much advised nowadays cannot be taught; well, at least

not just as topic in the highly specialized academy that we have today. The holistic approach has to be

a capability devised from within, that reflects itself in everything we do at all times in our lives, no

matter the situation, no matter the object of our reasoning or of our feelings. I understand that it is

difficult to use architecture and lighting while you are creating it, but it is exactly that which is required

from the artist that wishes to intervene upon the environment.

Now, focusing more on lighting, lighting to the human scale is, following the architectural

counterpart, all that the lighting designer should be required to do sensibly. There isn't a much clearer

and more succinct way to put it, while condensing some rather difficult to assimilate notions, related

to a rather difficult to exercise practice. Here is, the ultimate objective defended in this paper, which is

being developed throughout, from this introduction until the final chapter.

Chapter Two Page 6

Chapter Two

▪ A Brief Introduction to the Cultural History of Light

The same Sun that has always heated and lighted us, the same sun that creates the day and the

night when it appears and disappears by the horizon, that makes the plants grow, thus feeding the

animals that we eat, has been how many different suns throughout history already?

The same sun that was once part of myth creation is it not the same sun that today is regarded

as a thermonuclear plant? Does this not happen just like it seems to make more sense according to our

cultural moment in the West and, thus, as we change for ourselves, does not what surrounds us also

change to accommodate us?

From the lighting designer point of view, studying the cultural history of light and visual

perception is the starting point to any serious approach to the lighting design practice, hence the need

to include a chapter like this in this essay.

Because we can't make the history of the facts, but only the history of what we think or have

thought before about those facts, we have to consider that light as it exists nowadays, is the same light

it has always existed before, from the prehistory of our species until the present day, only what changes

is the interpretation and explanation of the phenomena under the eyes of one or another culture. This,

of course, is nevertheless a source of greater wealth because instead of a single ultimate explanation on

A Brief Introduction to the Cultural History of Light Page 7

the subject, we have several different explanations, ultimate in their own context, which, when

combined, provide a comprehensive and complete overview on the various relationships that we have

had with the phenomena of light and vision.

Given this, I wish to ask the following question: what will the sun be made of in a couple of

centuries or so?

The history of light is first of all the story of how we have related to it. Taking this as a premise

for the development of the essay, the question will be how to support and justify this relationship and

also how to reach the essence of its nature.

Let's start by briefly delving into this story of the cultural light, brilliantly narrated by A.

Zajonc, among others, which is something beautiful and that, since ancient times, has been a revelation

of the different perspectives in which we have approached the topic of light, be they religious, spiritual,

scientific, social or artistic.

Classic Age

It is from the epics “The Odyssey” and “ The Iliad”, that we can speak in the first registration

of a Western consciousness about light and colour, and if on one hand it is easy to recognise that both

sunlight and the capacity of vision remain unchanged after nearly three millennia, on the other hand,

it is not as clear that for Homer the concept of colour was seen in such a different way, inasmuch as

"blue" or "green" would not be a valid reference to him, and to the Hellene of his time. The sky could be

referred to as "iron" or "bronze" and the sea as "black", "grey" or "red", but in any part of the Iliad or the

Chapter Two Page 8

Odyssey we read of the sea or the sky as being “blue”.

Nearly five centuries after Homer, also Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle, describes a stone

with the name of kianos, the same that today we call lapis lazuli, and we can surely assume that the

colour has the name of the stone, and not the other way around. This is something that happens with

many colours that take the name of something concrete, and then an identification of the colour with

the object that has that colour as one of its most obvious characteristics occurs.

Beyond comparative, the naming of a colour is several times metaphorical, but see the case of

chloros, which the Greek philosophers eventually associated with the colour “green”. In “The Iliad”

honey is chloros, the same term is used to describe tears and blood and we can thus conclude that

chloros before being "green" meant the quality of what is fresh or wet. Even today we refer to

something fresh, precocious or recent as something "green”.

The platonic description of vision was a description that was accepted for about fifteen

centuries, given the strength and harmony of its statements. For Plato, following Empedocle, the

phenomenon of visual perception occurred when two lights of different origins would meet, one from

the exterior and the other from our interior. This was a so-called fire of the eye that radiates outwards

from the eyes and coalesces with the light outside forming a homogeneous body of light. This entity

would promote the connection between objects and the soul, and the mediation between the

cavernous darkness outside, as the light from headlights of a car travelling at night in the darkest of

roads.

This would be the eye of the mind, which decodes and gives intelligible meaning to stimuli


received by the visual system. Conversely, how many times have we happened to drop a small object

on a carpet, and after some time of sweeping the carpet with our eyes and fingers, we are left with the

impression that we have found it in a place where we have sought several times, with the certainty it

did not move by itself, and although we have seen it, we have failed to perceive it.

During the second century BC, according to Euclid of Alexandria, this phenomenon is

explained by the theory of the visual ray. Unlike Empedocle's and Plato's prospect of an ethereal and

immaterial fire of the eye, this theory indicates that a seminal mechanistic proposal was being

conjectured, adapting the theory of Plato and giving it a much more geometric propensity,

coincidentally generating the key tools for the development of optical science, which works light in a

strictly geometrical method. Vision was now interpreted as the result of the launching of straight rays

from our eyes and, like arrows, targeting the objects of our perception.

Middle Age

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and later with the closing of the Academy in 529

AD, we arrived to what has equivocally been dubbed as the “Age of Darkness” on the European

continent. Lost was the legacy of Hellenistic philosophy with the triumph of the religious institution

that controlled what was knew and by whom and how it was known. Of course, light had another

interpretation during this period, not exclusively then, but perhaps with the strongest influence. Light

was then believed to be matter in religious faith, it was the “body” of God, the holy spirit and even

Jesus Christ.

Chapter Two Page 10

While the West condemned the Hellenistic legacy, thinkers in the Near and Middle East,

during the VI and VII centuries undertook with commitment the efforts to master and deepen the

knowledge that had come from the Greek peninsula, and it is in this context that arises the figure of

Ibn al-Haytham2 and that history recognises as a major precursor of optic science, due to the creation

of the theory of light as an array of visual rays that do not have origin or that depart from the eyes of

the observer, as postulated by Euclid – still the basis of optic science of our “developed” times.

It is also with Ibn al-Haytham that the concept and the device called camera obscura first

appears, and which would be, later in the XVII century, the genesis of the physiological model of the

human eye and, therefore, also of the photographic camera.

In the XIII century, the work of Robert Grosseteste “De Luce”, presents itself as a true

cosmogony of light based on the platonic thought. Light is the first bodily entity, multiplying itself

infinitely from a point, it would expand and condense and would give rise to the universe. This is

essentially a geometric view of the origin of the universe, where God is a geometer and light is his

materia prima. Grosseteste also believed in the existence of a non-physical light, a spiritual light, which

was the same that gave way to the angels.

Enlightenment

Obtaining a reversed image in the darkroom was something that would torment the curious

minds for a long time. A big question indeed, regarding which, only R. Descartes would come up with

2 Ibn al-Haytham (b. 965, d.1040), known as Alhazen in the West.


a satisfactory answer. Descartes' studies covered not only the functioning of the visual system, but also

proposed its anatomy and advanced the notion of a philosophy of perception. Descartes tells us how

the eye catches the outside bright light according to optical principles, while the interior is portrayed as

a dark region.

The theory of the inner light ray ceases to have any value to the science of rationalism; after

Descartes, we have embraced a theory of vision that is divided in two stages, the first being mechanistic

and materialist, which exists at the level of the optical apparatus, for Descartes it is the world of

substance - res extensa - that during the process of perception leads to a second stage assigned to the to

the soul, in which physical stimuli are subjected to interpretation - res cogitans.

This is a clear division between the outside world, where the laws of optics prevail, and the

world inside, where the image can only be reversed by means of the soul. Here you can still identify a

clear connection to the classic period, but it would eventually be discarded.

In the words of the romantic scientific positivism of T. Huxley “we must, sooner or later, reach

a mechanical equivalent of consciousness” (cit. in Zajonc 1993: 34). Today, and despite continued

efforts, we can say that the English biologist probably found the task much more accessible at the end

of the XIX century. Biologists like Hubel and Huxley argued that the brain works as a machine that

performs tasks in a manner consistent with the laws of physics, and it wouldn't be long before those

laws would cease to be wrapped in scientific mystery, without having the need to find reasons on

mystic subterfuges as proposed by Descartes. Needless to say, this belief paved the way for modern

neurophysiology, which still insists on the decoding of the mysterious ways of the brain.

Chapter Two Page 12

Descartes had argued that space is inseparable from matter, where there is extension, it

necessarily has to refer to an extension over matter, like so “space” should be filled with a fluid material

that occupied the emptiness and would carry the planets and stars in their celestial movements. To this

fluid, Descartes, called plenum3.

Descartes believed that the eye sees any object through a column of plenum, the image of that

object would obviously be brought to us by light, and rather than a ray or a stream of plenum, it would

be described by Descartes as "a tendency to motion” propagated at an infinite speed. The phenomenon

of vision is then limited to the interaction between the eye and the propagation of light in the plenum.

Besides the fact that all this has arisen from a dream with lightning and ghosts, as we can

understand Descartes clears the way for what would later be known as the wave theory of light, which

Newton, while follower of Descartes, fails to corroborate, and that ultimately is contrary to Descartes'

initial will of finding a principle to describe the mechanistic nature of light.

Certainly, Newton believed determinately in the mechanical nature of light, and therefore

could Newton use his analytical method of integration to decompose light in its constituting parts? In

a way we are led to believe that he could, at least so it was credited, by means of Newton's trademark

image - the triangular prism.

According to Newton, the rays of light are created by the sun, travelling in our direction

without interference, be it reflections, refractions or dispersions, each type of ray will produce different

sensations in us by the perception of different colours. The sum of these elemental parts in light will

3 The same principle was later known as aether, referring to the aether proposed many centuries before by Aristotle.


lead to the formation of the typical white light characteristic of the Sun. This white light can be

partitioned by an optical tool like a glass prism, although another prism placed subsequently on the

path of broken light, will compose it again in white light.

Light became understood as matter, like everything else, and it is with this postulate that the

first great scientific theory of unification of reality is created - nature was one, to the eyes of scientific

rationalism.

Although the theory does not solve all the problems and even fails in some relevant issues, its

acceptance was almost immediate and general, because very few, scientists or not, were those who

dared to point out the deficiencies of Newton's theory. On the other hand the scientific paradigm

coming from the light as wave view, which appears unintentionally with Descartes, ultimately becomes

a competitor to Newton's theory, but the truth is that the wave theory was simply not so well accepted

because it failed experimental verification and it required a greater capacity of abstraction to be

perfectly understood. At a time when materialism was imperative, saying that, after all, light was not

substance but only a disturbance in a substance, or that "tendency to motion" of a substance, was a

definition with abstract contours and therefore closer to metaphysics than to the classical physics of

Newton, and to classical mechanics, in particular.

Modern Age

Euler's publication of 1746, New Theory of Light and Colour, was an effort largely based on the

vibrating nature of light, but still without providing answers to a question that was raised constantly as

Chapter Two Page 14

a counterargument, and this was the question about the phenomenon of diffraction of light. This

would only be explained in a satisfactory manner later on, at the beginning of the nineteenth century

by T. Young, who supported Euler's vision on the vibrating nature of light.

The explanation of the phenomenon of diffraction is done via the introduction of the concept

of "principle of interference" proposed by Young. This hypothesis is analogous to the creation of

concentric waves on the surface of a lake to where two stones have been thrown. In those areas where

the waves created by the two stones meet, we say that there is interference and that the waves are going

to interfere cancelling each other or reinforcing their amplitudes4.

In general, the proposals of Descartes, Huygens, Euler and Young differ in some details, but

have in common a justification in an analogue model of the propagation of waves in matter. The wave

theory was still largely connected to that initial Cartesian postulate that there is no space without

matter, but even this anchor would eventually be lifted with the development of mathematical analysis,

as the mathematicians of the XVII century, the era of Neoplatonism, gradually overcame the barriers

of the non-portrayable in the direction of pure abstractionism, and thus this would represent the

openness of the mind to “unimaginable” quantities.

Both the diffraction and polarization of light could not be explained through a materialistic

model, and in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Augustin Fresnel and Thomas Young made

the burial of the materialistic theory of Newton through the explanation of those phenomena with a

wave theory that proceeded the following concept: the direction of vibration is perpendicular to the

4 This is also the explanation that serves as the basis for the model of propagation of sound in the air, but to that date, a mathematical model translating the notions of interference and resonance had not yet been proposed.


direction of propagation.

The next action to make "progress" in the science of light would be prepared by Faraday in

1831, when he understands that phenomenon by the operating principles of electromagnetic induction

and the resulting disruption in space that is subjected to that induction. To this disturbance in space

Faraday called electric waves, and they are nothing but what we know today as the magnetic field

created by the variation of current in a coil.

The question here that makes sense to pose is this: does the aforementioned "electric wave"

need a material to propagate? The answer would be no, it doesn't. The existence of a material that

accommodates itself to the demands of serving as “transportation vehicle” of that kind of waves would

lead to the assumption that the “new” aether would have to be so fluid in order to allow the movement

of celestial bodies, but, on the other hand, would have to be infinitely rigid to allow light travelling at

such a huge speed. By renouncing the need for a medium to allow the spread of electromagnetic waves,

a revolution in the explanation of light was just around the corner: force instead of matter was the real

essence of nature. Despite Faraday's discoveries, he did never intend to rule out the aether hypothesis,

they were even complementary, but it was an unavoidable consequence realising that

electromagnetism could survive without the aether, and as it is of good practice in science, loose ends

are always cut.

The hypothesis of the aether was also completely abolished with a decisive contribution from

Maxwell, who systematized in his famous four equations5, what Faraday's theory proposes, but did not

5 Maxwell's equations where fundamental in relating the electric field to the magnetic field, furthermore, by resorting to this group of four equations one could describe light in an electromagnetic wave fashion.

Chapter Two Page 16

manage to quantify. These four equations by Maxwell are presented in his work of 1864, A Dynamic

Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. Henceforth, light would be seen as something inseparable from

fields hitherto considered non-related: electricity and magnetism, and thus light is now characterized

as having the behaviour of an electromagnetic wave, or as an electromagnetic disturbance. This, in

turn, implies a new relationship with the concept of energy, although the electromagnetic theory did

not pave the way for the arrival of the concept of the light quantum.

While some scientists were still trying to prove a mechanistic theory of light, scientists,

unaware of these disputes, began to pursue a path leading to unexpected consequences. Everything

started in 1814 when J. Fraunhofer decides to examine sunspots, as previously detected by Galileo,

placing a prism against the eye of a telescope pointed at the sun. The conclusion withdrawn from that

experiment was that the spectrum of sunlight studied by Fraunhofer is discontinuous, contrary to what

had been proposed by Newton.

Other associations of major importance were advanced in 1859 by Kirchhoff and Bunsen who

had the clarity to match the bands of colour present in the spectrum of sunlight, to the colour of flames

from the combustion of different chemical compounds, which means that each chemical element has

an unique and discreet light signature.

This extraordinary discovery was what made spectral analysis possible, resulting in the

introduction in 1860 of the concept of "black-body", by Kirchhoff. The black-body is the perfect

absorber, but it is also the perfect emitter. When the black-body is targeted by a light source it will

absorb all wavelengths present in this radiant energy, without reflecting or transmitting any of them.


Furthermore, when it is provided with enough energy, and it begins to heat up, the black-body will

start to emit this energy in the form of radiation with a discreet wavelength that is dependent only on

the amount of energy that the black-body receives.

Kirchhoff was unable, though, to find the relationship between the amount of energy supplied

to the black-body and the wavelength of the radiation emitted by it. This was a pressing issue, and even

critical to the creation of light bulbs with higher luminous efficiency, something that Max Planck was

determined to solve.

In 1899, addressing the problem of black-body radiation of Kirchhoff, and the questions left

unanswered since 1860, Planck gives in to a decisive condition. Assuming that any body can be

considered an atomic oscillator, it will be expected that this body emits a determined amount of

radiation in response, visible or not, but Planck would ascertain that radiation does not vary linearly

according to a continuous increase of energy transmitted to the black-body, and that the issuance of a

certain radiation is dependent on a specific increase of a discreet quantity of energy, which will lead to

the conclusion that even light could be quantified by calculating a minimum amount of energy, the

quantum of light.

The quanta of light were, however, necessary for the immediate future. We were at the turn of

the century, and with the new century the unavoidable emergence of the figure of Einstein.

In 1909, Einstein introduced to the scientific community something so shocking as a proposal

to return to a material and corpuscular conception of light, with the proposal of the existence of

elementary particles of light. The fundamental unit of energy - the quantum of light - gave rise to an

Chapter Two Page 18

indivisible particle, the photon, but this would be a reciprocal relationship, according to the formula

E = mc2. The photon presents itself as a concept of difficult grasp, given it has to have virtually zero

mass, in order to achieve the speed of light6, and it also displays a wave-particle duality. On one hand it

is a wave phenomenon in situations of refraction or diffraction, and on the other hand, it is a

corpuscular phenomenon when interacting with matter by transferring a specific quantity of energy, as

Einstein found by the occurrence of the photoelectric effect.

Unlike the model proposed by Newton, Einstein's model was not immediately accepted and

some physicists, including Planck and N. Bohr, going their own way, tried to complete flaws and

improve on the electromagnetic theory.

The scientific freedom of Einstein came from his strictly theoretical way of doing science, the

so-called "experiment of thought" and this set him free from the limitations of experimental

verification in the terms of classical physics, which followed not only purely technical procedures but

also the classical notions of beauty and elegance.

Contemporaneity

For the greater part of the XX century the focus of scientific research on light relied heavily on

the implications of quantum mechanics, namely on the developments put forward by Einstein and

Planck. These have been crucial on defining a scientific “light” that closely behaves as radiant energy.

This radiant energy had very specific characteristics and could be easily defined by a given wavelength

6 The speed of light c equals 299,792,458 m/s in the vacuum.


and frequency, phase, polarization and intensity. “Light” being defined as electromagnetic radiation

was thoroughly investigated especially in the field of theoretical physics, but it was in the optical and

technological field that the scientific light expanded the most.

Science at the service of technology provided a huge boost in the development of optical and

lighting instruments, and still today, despite the recent advices provided by neural and visual

physiology, most of the interest in the term “light” pertains to its technological valency, confusing itself

with lighting instruments and applications.

It is characteristic that in the course of the XX century several ways of approaching the same

question arose. Firstly, it became the object study of cognitive and perceptual psychology, even without

it keeping a direct focus on light most of the time, “perceptual” always implied a strong connection

with visual, and consequently with light. Since the founding works of Wilhelm Wundt, to the

extraordinary holistic developments brought by the Gestalt movement of Wertheimer, Koffka and

Köhler, and the permeating works of Jean Piaget; cognitive and perceptual psychology became a very

strong component in the way of thinking “light”, especially during the last third of the century.

Increasingly, light starts to be explained, not exclusively, but also as a cognitive and perceptual process.

A parallel approach came from the development of the physiological fields of study, namely

related, the ocular and cerebral physiology, which led to the identification of areas in the brain

responsible for “processing” the electric stimuli carried over by the optic nerves, the visual cortex.

Modern ocular and cerebral physiology tends to reduce everything to electric impulses, simply because

it is the way of presently understanding the brain, like so, also the role of the eye becomes merely that

Chapter Two Page 20

of translating the physical stimuli of radiant energy into another kind of electric stimuli to the brain.

The eye, according to physiology, is nothing but a transducer that converts “visible radiation” into

visual signals.

All this becomes combined in the contemporary view of “light”. Because all explanations are

insufficient by themselves, the natural tendency was to explain the whole phenomenon with a set of

approaches to cover all grounds. Thus, “light” is still considered to be radiant energy in the scientific

circle; to the physicist light is still an interval in the electromagnetic scale or spectrum. Physiologists

were keen enough to not associate that interval with visibility; still, they state that the impression of

light arises from the physiological adaptation of photo receptors in the eye's retina to the referred

interval in the electromagnetic scale, from 380nm to 780nm7. Thus, while light, or the impression of

brightness, is not radiant energy the whole functioning of the visual system depends on the existence

of this measured interval in the electromagnetic spectrum.

The physiological view proposes a comprehensive explanation on the anatomy of the eye,

defining its constitution in:

– mechanical components: muscles dealing with the eyes positioning and with the aperture

of the crystalline lens;

– optical components: responsible for the focusing of the image on the retina, including the

lens and all the transparent mediums in the eye;

– its sensory components: the retina with its millions of photo sensitive cells, three cone

7 According to Boyce, 2003: 3-4.


types (S, M and L) and rods; being the fovea centralis a special region in the retina with an

area of approximately π/4 mm2; where the largest concentration of cone photoreceptors

can be found; compared to the very scarce distribution across its peripheral area, where a

predominance of rods occurs;

– and the visual pathway, the electrochemical impulse transmission via the optic nerves

from the retina to the optic chiasm and finally to the visual cortex.

Furthermore, the physiological view defines other key aspects for the functioning of the visual

apparatus. The proposal of different spectral sensitivity curves is based upon statistical measurements.

The Photopic Observer spectral sensitivity curve appears as early as 1923, based on measurements

made by Gibson and Tyndell, defining a peak in luminous sensitivity around 555 nm. This curve has,

in the meantime, been rectified. The sole implementation of this curve proved insufficient for low

luminance conditions, the reason for which another curve of spectral sensitivity would be developed

between 1945 and 1949, by Wald and Crawford, and introduced in 1951 by the CIE 8, the Scotopic

Observer spectral sensitivity curve. This new curve describes a different sensory peak at 507nm.

These curves are the reason which justified the need for a new measuring system especially

adapted to this use of “light”, photometry, from which point it became plausible to talk about “amount

of light”. Photometric quantities vary from radiometric ones merely by the fact that the radiant energy

is measured in correlation to the particularities of the sense of human vision, described by these three

8 From the French Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage, International Commission on Illumination.

Chapter Two Page 22

V (λ) curves, Photopic vision, Photopic modified and Scotopic vision.

Relating the last paragraph Boyce specifies that:

Photopic vision... occurs at adaptation luminances higher than approximately 3

cd/m2 [candela per square meter]. For these luminances, the retinal response is dominated

by the cone photoreceptors. This means that both colour vision and fine resolution detail are

available.

Scotopic vision... occurs at adaptation luminances less than approximately 0,001

cd/m2. For these luminances, only the rod photoreceptors respond to stimulation... this

means that colour is not perceived, only shades of grey, and the fovea of the retina is blind.

Mesopic vision... intermediate between photopic and scotopic states, i.e. between

0,001 and 3 cd/m2. In the mesopic state, both cones and rod photoreceptors are active.

(Boyce, 2003: 63-64)

Thus, light started being described as a set of quantities based on the new units of photometry9,

so we came to a point where it's almost impossible to talk about light without using these units under

penalty of no one understanding us. Still, very few people realise that photometric units are just a

special case of radiometry and, therefore, they're not quantifying light itself, but merely radiation.

Furthermore, the entanglement between physical light and physiological effects tightens upon

the proposal of the existence of an undetermined third receptor in the retina, that while not carrying a

visual function is responsible for the regulation of certain hormones associated to the biorhythm

9 The photometric units: Luminous Energy (lumen second), Luminous Flux (lumen or candela steradian), Luminous Intensity (candela or lumen steradian), Luminance (candela per square meter), Illuminance (lux or lumen per square meter), Luminous Emittance (lux or lumen per square meter) and Luminous Efficacy (lumen per watt).


effects of the circadian system, or the circarhythm. The suppression of melatonin is one of these

effects, and in a person exposed to radiation, especially with a spectral peak between 450 and 500 nm,

concentration levels of this hormone will substantially vary. The synthesis of melatonin by the pineal

gland seems to be dependent on the absence of luminous stimuli, in such circumstances, the body gets

ready for a sleep period. When the levels of melatonin in the blood stream drop, the body increasingly

“awakes”.

Conclusions Pertaining to Our Received View

These are indeed the human physiological factors determining the nature of light, which loses

the universalistic burden of physics, but is I'd say, merely a very special case of physics applied to

physiology, in the extent that they complete and rely on each other. The third area is that of

psychology of cognition, perceptual psychology and even psychophysical psychology. All these pull the

“reality” and the value of light towards the inside.

Even after clearing up that light is not radiant energy, and basically it is the result of a physical

stimulus, sentences like “After passing through the pupil, light reaches the crystalline lens...” (Boyce,

2003: 49) can still be found in dedicated literature. This clearly denounces that this contemporary view

is still very flawed, mostly because it tries to justify itself in a compartmentalized aggregation or

integration of different types of knowledge, that create a special kind of dualism, not wave-particle, but

subjective-objective, as enabled by psychophysical inferences.

While science produces a completely objective and material “light”, cognitive psychology

Chapter Two Page 24

produces a purely subjective light relying in the experience of the conscious sensation and, finally,

physiology tries to be the middle ground between them, pertaining to the motions in the sensorium –

impressions, explaining the subjectivity in light through objective bodily functions and further

developing a dualistic view of light..

Even if we can see physical light closer to physiological light, the gap between these and the

psychological light seems to be wider; nevertheless, all approaches fail in relating humans to the

phenomenon of light because they are hermetic in themselves. The whole contemporary view is

nothing but a collage, a patchwork of theories that may very well be admissible, but only in their

specific hermetic circles. As Goethe once said: “how often do they [physicists] try to divide what after

all remains one and whole" (Goethe, 1970).

The phenomenon of light may be, indeed, explained in hundreds of various ways, justified

only by the oppositions between each others, thus we are led to believe that Einstein and Planck, and

certainly many others, who dedicated most of their lives to physics, and certainly a lot of time to the

study of light, understood as radiant energy, eventually admitted the loss of the battle to remain in

absolute ignorance about what light is.

The problem is that light is not an object, scientific or of any other order; and when we close

our eyes, it is us who fail to see the light and not the other way around, but if we fail to see it we do not

cease to feel it; and, moreover, it is the definition of darkness the absence of light, and not the

definition of light the absence of darkness.

It is science itself that starts to get uncomfortable and arriving to a place where it finds no


answers to its own requests. Einstein destroyed the position of science as "divine eye", ending the

notion that it had to be about absolute truths, for with him the study of scientific objects got closer to

the subject (observer) and its context10. As a result, physics became more metaphysical, and judging by

the cultural context in which live now, this trend will further increase and possibly science will come

closer to contemporary art, concerning the process of creation and allocation of value.

Chances are, though, when this does happen, that the scientific view on “light” will drag

consequences to the physiological and cognitive/perceptual views as well. So, while this chapter's intent

is to lay down the received view and recall how we are culturally immersed in the subject of light, on

the other hand the consequence is that this can free our minds and go into other directions as we learn

what is the true meaning of all this.

The greater lesson to draw from this history, the explanation of the phenomenon of visual

perception and light is that, according to the different eras, it is a requirement that we answer the same

questions in a way that is significant for that cultural moment, because only that ensures the

understanding of the answer, and in any case, the actual formulation of answers. It is not that the

philosophers of ancient Greece were trying to study a different part of this phenomenon, nor is this a

matter of capacity or of rational development, only of perspective.

With careful thought upon the problem we will be able to see the fallibility of the analytical

system, because concerning any phenomenon, nature will answer our questions in the way we want it

to reply until the answers given by empirical knowledge satisfy the particular intention of proof; this

10 Direct reference to the Theory of Relativity.

Chapter Two Page 26

leads me to conclude that we have no knowledge on “reality”, only imagination of it.

Also, it seems that as time went by, we have focused more in the phenomenon of physical

light, radiant energy, whereas before there has been a more integrated understanding of visual

perception and light as a common or even the same reality. This is merely a symptom of the times and

to this extent we might be closing into a dramatic change in this saturated compartmented view that is

brought to us by modern vision physiology. About this discussion Aristotle would say “there is a

formal identity between visual perception and its objects and that the processes involved in perception

therefore do fall into the same scientific domain.” (Thompson, 1995: 26).

Light has been the sight of God, when the eye of Ra swept through "space" from one corner to

the other, illuminating and revealing everything in its path. With Christian faith light came down to

earth in the human figure, almost as an incarnation of Persian Sun-God Ahura Mazda. The cult of

light becomes literally understood when Gnostic-Manichean sects believed that redemption was

dependent on the release of light through human actions. From this point onwards, light would mostly

be understood as a scientific subject, and therefore scientifically reduced, until the contemporary

distinction between physical and visual light.

So, now I refer the reader to those sayings of Aristotle, the founder of the scientific method,

which presents some considerations on the nature of light, which in their simplicity are of great

relevance, they state that the presence or absence of light is in itself only “a change in the state of

things”.


The description given by Aristotle is still a basic truth, as is the proper style of Aristotle. He

saw in the essence of things the way to reach universality, and this is perhaps the most accurate and

what best represents the nature of light, or at least what we are capable of understanding from it and at

the same time it focuses on what really matters.

The intention of the first half of this essay will precisely be the effort to approximate the

contemporary view to this kind of elementary knowledge. A view that does not contain any collage or

patchwork in it, bridging the gaps found between the physical, physiological and psychological lights.

This shall be a view that is self-sufficient and meaningful to the point of enabling a better exercise and

a better use of lighting.

Chapter Three Page 28

Chapter Three

▪ On Goethe's Colour Theory

J. W. von Goethe (b.1749, Frankfurt, d.1832, Weimar) is widely recognised as the greatest

writer of the German language, and even the period that corresponds to his life time is often called the

"Age of Goethe." Goethe's statute reaches this enormous height depending not only on his works as a

poet, novelist and playwright but also on his works produced in the fields of geology, botany, anatomy,

physics, and politics.

The important studies in biology and geology were, with his peers at the time, the vanguard of

cutting open a new path on unexplored land. Goethe was part of the first wave of geologists and

biologists who have seen their work have an influence on the definition of new scientific expertises and

the creation of research trends for the nineteenth century.

I will have to emphasize, however, the developments carried out by Goethe in his theory of

colours and visual perception, for that is what his important Zur Farbenlehre (1810) is about. Starting

and ending at this point, Goethe argues for the first time, and against the empiricist Newtonian

physics, typically derived from the Enlightenment thought, that sensory experience would lead to

scientific knowledge by integration and posterior application using a personal perspective, and always

open to interpretation and reinterpretation.

On Goethe's Colour Theory Page 29

Light as Living Colour

For Goethe the study of colour and light begins in Weimar with a box of borrowed optical

instruments. Without patience or time to use those instruments that allegedly would prove Newton's

theories about light, it is by coincidence that upon the return of the loaned equipment, Goethe pulls a

glass prism up to eye level, just to verify that nothing happened. Intrigued by that non-event, Goethe

tries to discover in what circumstances does the famous Newtonian "split beam of light" occur, and it

was by the inside ledge of a window ajar that Goethe saw the colours and saw beyond.

Goethe concluded that for the appearance of prismatic colours two prerequisites were needed:

light and darkness. In fact, on a scale of brightness, colour is something that only appears halfway

between the absence of light – black, and maximum brightness - white, any colour is just like a kind of

saturated grey. It is not possible to "colour" either black or white, then when we are subjected to an

increasing or decreasing level of brightness, colour will be progressively lost in the direction of white

or black, respectively.

Colour is then part of something that Newton had not anticipated, it is this tension between

lightness and darkness, or in the words of Goethe: "Colours are the deeds and sufferings of light with

darkness" (cit. in Zajonc, 1993: 210).

If we are to achieve the true scale of light we should refer to its actions and gestures, which are

colours: "colours are acts of light, its passive and active modifications: thus considered we may expect

from them some explanation respecting light itself" (Goethe, 1970: Preface). In other words, seeing

colour is seeing light manifesting itself, as it does, in every possible situation.


Obviously, reducing this manifestation to the otherwise widely accepted split beam of light,

says nothing whatsoever of the experience of colour; besides, it no longer makes sense to speak of

"light" and "colour" as two distinct concepts that are touching in some particular moments, as light and

colour are of the same kind, to talk about light is to talk about colour, and to talk about colour is to talk

about light:

We should think of them [light and colour] as belonging to nature as whole, for it is

nature as a whole which manifests itself by their means to the sense of vision

(Goethe, 1970: Preface)

Fully grasping the full significance of this conclusion is in itself a big step forward for we

should turn immediately away from a compartmentalized vision of light, and begin to form an

undivided and univocal view of nature. I refrain from using the terms visual and physical, for these are

notions that would be conflicting in another perspective, as we shall see later on. I don't think that we

were ever meant to associate essence with materiality or physicality, but how we did it has been fully

discussed before.

A Revolutionary Attitude

When we further delve into Zur Farbenlehre we can realise that this is not a competing or a

complementary theory to that of Newton, corpuscular, or the wave theory which was in vogue in the

late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Goethe's theory was a true alternative that although


having scientific ambitions, did not seek to verify hypotheses nor to prove or disprove existing

theories. The theory isn't defined by existing scientific thinking, like all other scientific theories were at

the time; yet it does not try to be an opponent and to abolish other contemporary theories, if so, it

would not have been so innovative as to endure the test of time, as it seems to have been. A Theory of

Colours implicates primarily a set of attitudes to the level of thinking science and how to act not upon,

but before or towards nature. It's also pure description without intending to achieve a universal

knowledge, rather it is in the opposite that it finds its validity; the only pressing issue is the experience

of light and the phenomenon of vision by the subject.

Colour is an elementary phenomenon in nature adapted to the sense of vision 11; a

phenomenon which, like all others, exhibits itself by separation and contrast, by commixture

and union, by augmentation and neutralization, by communication and dissolution: under

these general terms its nature may be best comprehended.

(Goethe, 1970: Introduction – liv)

In our own projection of nature perceived, we must be aware that it presents as such due to a

very strong link to our human ways and, as we can see in this quotation, Goethe was very well aware of

this. Furthermore, Goethe understood that the traditional or classical science was contributing with

fruitless efforts, especially by trying to express nature in an abstract fashion, universalizing laws by

deducting them, and then considering exceptions or special cases inducing them. Nature is unified, not

compartmentalized, howsoever remaining impartible, it expresses itself in an almost endless number

11 Please remember this notion especially when reading Chapter Five.


of different effects to our senses, and these effects much more than they are exceptions or aberrations

of an universal law, are, themselves, the only law. Thus, the gathering and the study of all these

different manifestations that things may assume, should suffice to define the phenomenon in which

they originate. This is something that Goethe explains very clearly through his natural literary vein:

We can go on try to define the personality of a person, but when collecting all her

activities, a picture of her character will appear.

(Goethe, 1970: Preface)

So much so that Goethe does exactly what he promises and all manifestations that his

colleagues have overlooked and dismissed, are those that Goethe uses as foundations and as empirical

basis of his Theory of Colours.

1 - Naturally we place these [physiological] colours first, because they belong

altogether; or in a great degree, to the subject - to the eye itself. They are the foundation of

all doctrine and open to our view the chromatic harmony on which so much difference of

opinion has existed. They have been hitherto looked upon as extrinsic and casual, as illusion

and infirmity: their appearances have been known from ancient date; but as they were too

evanescent to be arrested, they were banished into the region of phantoms, and under this

idea have been very variously described.

(Goethe, 1970: 1)


In the early XIX century Goethe introduces a theory that for all purposes was a theory on

ghost-colours, which are the colours that exist only in the mind as a result of the operation of the

whole visual system, in its adaptation to different stimuli. Although the response of the “eye” is

characteristic and expected, of course, the effects experienced by each subject are not entirely identical,

denouncing, furthermore, subjectivity at the observer level by the specific physiology of a particular

visual system.

The colours that appear with this adaptation of the visual apparatus to different conditions,

invade our visual field and appear to float away from it, as new patches keep entering. As Goethe

assessed these are “our” colours and are particular to our individuality; they are a by-product of the

functioning of the visual and belong to the same scale of colours that make up the afterimages, or

subsequent images, an effect that Goethe addresses as "the appearance of coloured objects".

55 – As the opposite colour is produced by a constant law in experiments with

coloured objects on portions of the retina, so the same the effect takes place when the whole

retina is impressed with a single colour... in taking off green spectacles, we see all objects in

a red light. Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to

opposition.

(Goethe, 1970: 25)

What Goethe mentions here is the ancient battle between opposites, and this innate

functioning of the eye can be understood just as we have a skeleton and muscles to counteract gravity.

Suddenly, it seems a perfectly logical way of perceiving the outside, as it is also due to this


phenomenon that the chromatic harmony between complementary colours occurs. Both colours of

this pair are set to perform "a certain violence to the eye” and at the same time helping it in the natural

opposition that subsequently takes place, creating an instantaneous movement from one to the other.

Something related to this happens with the appearance of coloured shadows. The difference

between the hues will cause the eye to interpret this variation from a chromatic perspective, and

therefore qualitative rather than quantitative, or other. This visual process is called chromatic

adaptation.

In the law of required change ... the eye ... is compelled to form an opposition,

putting extreme against extreme ... rapidly merging opposites, and struggling to achieve

completeness.

(Goethe et al., 2007: 216-217)*

The eye is revealed spontaneously prone to generate a colour complementary to the stimulus,

these two colours together comprise the entire chromatic scale, and that's why a colour associated with

a particular state is pushing us towards universality and unity.

In this resides the fundamental law of all harmony of colours... If, again, the entire

chromatic scale is presented to the eye externally, the impression is gladdening, since the

result of its own operation is presented to it in reality.

(Goethe, 1970: 317-318)


By affinity with the practical use of colours by artists, Goethe thus addresses a novel issue for

the time and only very recently, in the past few decades, has it begun to take part of the agenda of those

working with colour. Goethe looks at how we relate to colours culturally and morally, implying an

inner mental process for a determinant relationship with colour, reflecting on their acceptance by the

psyche and how you can use the power of colour to achieve certain emotional states.

A somewhat saturated colour in its “pure” state, that is, without other purposes but to be

impression alone, possesses an enormous strength and beauty and its psychological effects must be

recognised. About this Goethe tells us that "colour is at all times specific, characteristic and

significant." (Goethe, 1970: 276). As we can see, Goethe promotes for the first time a connection that is

so intrinsic to such an extent that it became impossible to be understood by his peers, increasingly

caught up in the materialistic illusion that scientific positivism tends to create. Aware of this, Goethe's

ultimate intention was to present a theory that while not scientific per se, broadly followed the

scientific method, familiar to any inveterate scientist. Despite this approach, priorities and conclusions

are so radically different that the theory quickly fell into disrepute.

Goethe's Legacy

Although some of the ideas present here are now so obvious to us, the truth is that Goethe is

the basis behind all theories of colour perception that emerged in the twentieth century as those

promoted by the Bauhaus and Gestalt. Though he isn't generally credited for the breakthrough, that

what we have today as immediate and granted in the way we relate to light-colour, was two centuries


ago seen as incomprehensible and ridiculous. It was him who also initiated a moral and psychological

interpretation of colour, something that would be fully developed in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth century.

But what are the definite consequences of going towards a Theory of Colours? This path that

Goethe trails and tries to make others after him aware of, is the notion of creating organs to serve new

functions as we have designed them. Much like the organs studied by physiology, which are a forming

part of a living organism, have been developing and adapting by and to the environment, to carry out

one function optimally, it would be possible to create mental organs that satisfied and adapted to

certain requirements. This design of in-mind organs would have an ultimate intention, in the case of

perception, of developing a new relationship between the environment and self in a way that Goethe

dubbed as smooth and integrated.

This concept of creating organs will be, as we shall see, a starting point for Rudolf Steiner in

giving continuity to the work begun by Goethe, and with the same key assumption of the development

of new mental abilities, and capabilities not offered or imagined, and that obviously intervened in the

perception of what surrounds us and what permeates us.

By skills like these at a time when attitudes were dominated by the condition "either black or

white", Goethe came to add a palette of colours and shadings, thus making knowledge dependent on

the observer and making true and so provided with meaning sentences like “this green is fresher than

that one". In fact, Goethe realised that the perception of colour has more to do with states of mind,

allowing for different interpretations from person to person, than with discrete wavelengths or


vibrations in the aether, that contain no information and no knowledge as to convey the phenomenon

that they supposedly describe.

The fact that today we can express ourselves and think in these terms is so comfortable and

appropriate to our life experience and emotional ways that it rarely occurs to us that there has been a

dated historic starting point for that freedom.

We do have to remind ourselves that this awareness and attitude of Goethe appears in a

specific context as opposed to the Enlightenment and rationalism era, which had set in motion a

machine of extraordinary dimensions that would culminate in the advent of the industrial revolution

and that planted the seeds of materialism, reductionism and determinism, which in the twentieth-

century became intertwined with a deluded positivism at the service of technology, and because of this,

with such an inertia that it is still the ruling mentality in our days; but it is, as well, something with

tendency to change. The step taken by Goethe was such a large leap for the time, as was the one took

by Steiner, and if Zur Farbenlehre isn't fully acknowledged yet, so aren't the works of Steiner.

Chapter Four Page 38

Chapter Four

▪ On Steiner's Spiritual Colour

The name Rudolf Steiner is not completely unknown, but tends to be clouded in prejudice.

Steiner's name is associated with various fields such as agriculture, medicine, education, literature and

the arts, but is mainly linked to the movement of anthroposophy. This movement, for being

considered "spiritual" is in many parts of the Western world regarded as suspicious and put aside right

from the beginning. Steiner was not simply ignored; he found himself persecuted, attacked and

criticized by both the emerging Nazi political power and various sceptical factions of the scientific,

religious and academic communities.

Despite his extensive works have been deemed irrelevant from an academic perspective, which

has justified its position with alleged inconsistency, Steiner's works should not be viewed as a form of

speculation because Steiner practised, in his own style, the same degree of science of, say, his

contemporary, Einstein. This is something that is not immediately apparent and one cannot deny the

feeling that Western Civilization isn't yet, prepared to adopt all or part of the stance proposed by

Steiner. This is not, however, something that, in all honesty we may have the ambition to change

successfully.

On Steiner's Spiritual Colour Page 39

On Steiner and Anthroposophy

All the theoretical work of Steiner, written or lectured, the work related to Goethe, the

foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, the Waldorf school, the Eurythmics, among others,

demonstrate only the volume of work that Steiner left for posterity, but what was the motto behind all

this, what was his mission and also his inspiration?

When the human being comes to a consciousness of himself, questions arise as to his

own being, his nature, his destiny. In an age which has lost both insight and faith and has

become purely materialistic, the answers are difficult to find and problems remain unsolved

in the soul — hence a possible cause for the malaise in society today.

(Wilkinson, 2001: Introduction)

Steiner realised that the modern age and the absolute commitment to science and technology,

to the new political systems of republics and democracies, are to blame for obstructing the importance

given to the individual, and all they entailed such as the adoption of an universal educational format

dependent on the economic model that governs. This would eventually lead to the collapse of human

values unless some alternative plan was set in motion, and the turn of the century was, according to

Steiner, exactly the right moment.

He [Steiner] gives knowledge of things spiritual and demands spiritual activity. It is of

course easy to cast doubts on his statements. It is simple to deny any truth which one does

not understand. Any mathematical, chemical or technical formula is a closed book to the one


who does not understand it, but understanding can be acquired. The same arguments apply to

spiritual science.

(Wilkinson, 2001: Introduction)

Here I must stress the term "spiritual science" and compare it to the scientific method

employed by Goethe in his Theory of Colours. The use of a scientific or quasi-scientific method is

almost a requirement to give credit to "theories" and that is not at all just a whim, for the ability to

understand the message, has to be closer to the kind of thought in vogue at a given time. They are,

moreover, systematic models, elaborated in compliance with simple assumptions like those of cause

and consequence, they propose experimental verification and offer proof or evidence.

If Aristotle ran the Western thought up the sense-experience alley, it seems only natural that

Steiner, many centuries later, proposes a different direction for thought, perhaps more “advanced” and

more elegant, to a perception of spiritual reality, regulating the extrinsic being, i.e. the environmental

being, or in the words of Arnold Freeman:

I am convinced that Steiner had exact, detailed, comprehensive — in the fullest

sense 'scientific' — experience and knowledge of super-physical aspects of existence; that he

could speak of the Spiritual World with the same sort of confidence with which the physical

scientist talks of the material things with which he is familiar. I am convinced that he has

laid, unshakably, the foundations of a greater science of the future.

(cit. in Wilkinson 2001: Introduction)


This is, then, Steiner's intention when he investigates the spiritual worlds, and brings common

sense understanding and knowledge of the spirit, while also providing a scientific explanation to justify

the place of religion and religious belief, creating a bridge between the physical world -extrinsic- and

the spiritual -intrinsic-. To this letter of intents, Steiner called Anthroposophy12. The difference to

anthropology is short but significant: anthroposophy is not the knowledge or thought about or on

humans, but the knowledge that comes from us intrinsically, and to Steiner that is also synonymous

with "spiritual science".

In any case, anthroposophy, is only one path leading to knowledge, and the “digestion” of

knowledge produces wisdom, but not in an academic sense. This "digestion" is pure meditation,

assimilation, not to be confused with rational thought, and as Goethe predicted this "digestion" can be

performed by a specific organ that will be devoted exclusively to a process of assimilation, an organ for

the conscious spiritual perception of nature. This body can be created by the mind in all its “free

space”. The very study and assimilation of anthroposophy is already by itself a conscientious spiritual

activity that creates and swells a new organ of perception.

Because anthroposophy is not supposed to be absolute or, on the other hand, limited in any

way, the knowledge hereby generated or associated with it has no limits, so it can be practically applied

in different situations every day. Although it may seem strange that a so-called "spiritual science" could

have practical application in day-to-day events, Steiner assures that this is the only way that we should

12 From anthropos + sofia, meaning "knowledge of the spiritual being”, humans.


understand anthroposophy, and not as something that remains stationed in the mind. Its effects,

reverberating in the soul and the spirit will "govern" our daily life and the connection we sustain with

the environment.

Steiner's Anthroposophical View

Steiner's "Theory of Colour” is more of an anthroposophical view that Steiner has on colour,

rather than a hermetic thought tightly circumspect and devoted to the concept and phenomenon of

colour.

Steiner's "Theory of Colour" was intended to be the basis for a spiritual scientific

understanding of colour by artists. The understanding of this colour theory cannot be forced because

understanding it will not be a matter of reasoning, it is something like the adaptation of the body to

different atmospheric pressure levels and other air temperatures, while it doesn't require any logical

activity, the ability to understand it will grow with maturation.

Generally, colour is understood as a feature belonging to the areas where we see them, which

means it is generally considered to be an extrinsic characteristic. We normally ask “what colour is the

chair?” and not “what colour do you see in the chair?”, while language enables us to communicate with

others, it also denounces our train of thought. Contrarily, “colour” should always be understood as a

"subjective feeling", therefore, an intrinsic or in-mind characteristic. So much it is so that when we try

to describe a particular colour we will inevitably resort to subjective descriptions, i.e., to realise colour

“objectively” we must keep strictly to its particular sphere and never leave it in order to explain that


phenomenon. We relate to colour by feeling, and afterwards maybe we denote the feeling with

emotion; to know “objectively” what lies on this basis we must ask what is "living" and what is active

about colour, the very same things that enable colour with the capacity of modulating the soul.

Experiencing colour should become a well defined and concrete, not abstract, activity of the

mind. The mind must make an effort to associate figures, movement, imagery or symbols, even if

metaphorically, to express the sensations that colour or combinations of colours create in a subject,

and it is by this capacity that we can develop what we shall call the "experience of colour”.

The imagination is a fine and beautiful instrument but we must experiment with it if

we want to discover this [the experience of colour] for ourselves.

(Steiner 1996: 18)

When we have a red stripe on a green band we will have to ask ourselves what happens, “we

must ask what happens to a green meadow in which red figures move” (Steiner 1996: 18) so we can

talk about the world of colour entering inside the world of colour.

Steiner develops this idea and gives us a diagram with his principal or primary colours; these

colours are not primary for the same reasons that red, blue and green or yellow, cyan and magenta are.

These four colours are considered primary by direct relation to the fourfold dimensional being 13. The

13 Steiner's fourfold being is comprised cumulatively of four different dimensions. The bottommost: the dimension of the body, it is by having this dimension that we are material beings; next, the living dimension, this is the dimension of the living organism; the dimension of the soul, this is what animates us, in other words it is by having this dimension that we can be distinguished as animals; finally, the spiritual dimension, the topmost dimension, the one that distinguishes us as human beings.


four colours are black, green, peach-blossom and white, and in anthroposophy they represent the

following:

Black represents the spiritual image of the lifeless. If the illuminant is the lifeless and the

illuminated is the spirit, then the image formed, the shadow, is black; this is the characteristic colour of

the lifeless.

Green represents the lifeless image of the living. If the illuminant is the living and the

illuminated is the lifeless, then the shadow formed will be green; the characteristic colour of the living.

Peach-blossom represents the living image of the soul. If the illuminant is the soul and life is

the illuminated, the shadow formed is peach-blossom; the characteristic colour of the soul.

White or light itself represents the soul's image of the spirit. If the illuminant is the spirit and

the soul is the illuminated, the shadow formed is white; the characteristic colour of the spirit.

For Steiner these are the coloured reflections which nature presents: "the coloured world is not

reality, even in nature itself is only image" (Steiner 1996: 26-27). What Steiner means to say with this is

that colour is for us mere representation or symbol, as advocated Goethe. It is significant value that

does not exist physically, it exists as modulations of the soul.

How Steiner comes to these objective descriptions of colour it does not matter much for the

purposes of this essay, however, he reaches them once again following a quasi-scientific process,

analogous to a deductive method, closely connected with anthroposophy. Moreover, the

representations or images of other colours could be obtained, but concerning these colours that Steiner

calls image-colours, they seem to be as universal as the fact that all bodies with mass are subjected to


gravity on Earth.

If black, white, green and peach-blossom have the feature of image-colour, yellow, blue and

red are lustre-colours, there's something shiny about them, they are bright colours and manifestations

of the external characteristics of an inner reality.

Through yellow we become more attuned with our own "I"; we are, in other words

filled with spirit. If we take yellow in its original stage, fading outwards, and think of it

shining within you because it is a lustre-colour, shining into you as spirit, you'll have to say,

yellow is the lustre of the spirit. Blue, gathering itself inwardly, dammed up, enclosed within

itself, is the lustre of the soul. Red, filling space evenly, is the lustre of the living.

(Steiner, 1996: 39)

Steiner warns that to assimilate these statements we have to understand them through feelings

and not by abstract reasoning. When we realise that green is a representation of life and that red is the

lustre of life, we can see the relationship between the two colours. After the impression of the eye with

a red hue, looking away reveals to us the green afterimage: “the red shines into you and forms within

you its own image [green]" (Steiner 1996: 39). By now we can state that image-colours and lustre-

colours have affinity with other qualities, the first are passive and the latter are active.

We start realising that we are drawing together a body of knowledge that allows us to use

colour as surgical instruments, almost as symbols of a meta-language, much like music, that may have

particular application in lighting design, particularly resorting to the inconspicuous use of ambient

lighting, for creating particular moods or modulations to the soul of its beneficiaries:


The artist knows that when he handles yellow, blue or red it must induce in his

picture something that expresses an inwardly dynamic quality which itself gives character...

Such a science of colour is so inwardly living that it can pass immediately from the soul's

experience into art.

(Steiner, 1996: 40)

Colours, as sounds, reveal themselves; it's not necessary to examine the nature of sound or

conventions around it so that a sound has its referent sonic-image14, and further creates an emotion.

One could ask if this was not also a capacity acquired as a result of an organ designed for that purpose,

and the answer would be, yes. Sound and sonic-images were not always intimate partners and even if

obeying some laws, that relationship allows for imagination to always make a contribution.

Steiner, once again, follows very closely Goethe's lead in both the creative use of colour, as in

the moral experimentation with colour. The issues of colour polarity and of tension between light and

darkness, all these issues are more shallowly or more deeply discussed by Steiner, with a more spiritual

penchant. This is the main innovation introduced by Steiner, but that does not contradict the essence

of what Goethe had written before.

Also on the colour of the sky Steiner relates to Goethe, saying that at dawn light seen through

darkness is red:

As the sun has not yet quite come up; it is still dark where you are, and in the

distance these clouds are being shone on by the sun... appearing through the darkness around

14 A sonic-image is a concept that describes the ideas of sonic referents that arise upon the act of listening. For instance, when you hear a bird chirping, the image of the that bird producing that chirp is the sonic-image for that sound.


you. You are seeing the light through darkness... in the red of sunrise -- and the same applies

with the sunset...

(Steiner 1996: 127)

These two laws: light through darkness is red, and dark through lightness is blue, are the two

fundamental laws in the Theory of Colours that Goethe points out with the sentence "colours are the

actions and sufferings of light with darkness”, and that underlies connected to the circumstances of all

empirical trials, as Goethe himself clearly acknowledged. Even if these two laws were simply intuited

by ancient civilizations in Asia and the West until the end of the Middle Ages, in the meantime why

the sky is now blue or red has a rather more complicated explanation, despite being at its core simply

the same ideas through other words15.

Sense and Sensibility

The fact that remains is that both Goethe and Steiner are products of an era that came to be

called "romantic" and, according to this, both the work of the first and of the second are indelibly

impregnated by this "aura" that goes beyond the senses of written words, and to our eyes, accurately or

not, are associated with those characteristics that have created conditions to begin the search for

spiritualism. Well, this is all very interesting, but the reader may rightly wonder what to do with all this

"romantic beauty”, if that's not only good enough to be kept in books.

Anyone who develops to the level of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition does not

15 Direct reference to the Rayleigh scattering effect.


see man's externally visible head only, but he sees quite objectively the thought organism

man has by virtue of having a head. He sees thoughts... If the faculties of Imagination,

Inspiration and Intuition are developed, then the thought forces, which are the basis of the

head organization..., become visible, to use the word in a figurative sense. How do they

become visible?... The only expression we can use for this visibility, which is obviously of a

soul-spiritual nature, is that they become luminous.

(Steiner 1996: 97)

In my view, what we can learn from this passage, and once again undoing all the apparent

"occultism" that it could be labelled with, are three key concepts which once "deducted" can be taken as

tools for a practical application of this "Theory of Colour”: the super-sensitivity of the Three I's of

Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition.

The use of this information perceived extra-sensory can be worked in different ways by

resorting to these Three I's mentioned by Steiner, and this is nothing but an egotistical operation,

which comes from the essence of being, taking into account the emotions aroused, the memories and

instinct, among others. One thing is certain, intuition, imagination and inspiration are always true, or

for whatever reason, are always justified and validated as the oracle of a Greek tragedy, for it will

always agree with the being. Science and method are, on the other hand, never true, but only valid or

applicable.

Using intuition as a tool for understanding and transforming the environment or in other

words, empathically relating the self with the environment, is something that is intrinsic and not

something foreign or unnatural. The Three I's can not be, by definition, an arbitrary face of the


spiritual body, they are part of a coherent and unambiguous entity, even in the event of apparent

contradictions denounced by reason, obviously in these cases we see the limitations of reasoning and

not the limitations of imagination, intuition or inspiration.

I admit, however, that the use of these Three I's has been relegated to third or fourth level, and

invariably the intuitive, imaginative and inspirational muscle aches when we solicit it, and yet it is not

necessary to want to use this muscle. For this to happen it is only necessary to unhook the mind from

what it has been programmed to do. By abstraction we can devalue some beliefs and assume a posture

that allows the occurrence of certain mental states, and we need to, above all, offer us a freedom that

we always had from the beginning.

This change of attitude is not something that is foreign to us, and the openness to new truths,

by itself leads to new truths. Is it not fair to ask whether the earth was still believed flat, could we have

satellites orbiting around? Consequently our notions of "gravity" and "suspension" would be quite

different, without, however, being less valid or less correct.

The use of intuition, imagination or inspiration in an enforceable way necessarily raises many

questions, because they are always true, does not mean that they appear "ordered" or in line with

rational intentions, hence they are often overlooked by other processes of decision, following “blind”

methods to reach a conclusion-making stadium, without having to sustain a procedural crisis.

As we see, the "digestion" and assimilation of these concepts turn out to demystify them

completely, and the adjective "mystical", referring to the "supernatural", "hidden" or "mysterious"


usually must come from someone who does not understand what we're talking about. I conclude this

because in any work by Steiner did I ever see the employment of such adjectives. Nothing is

supernatural, everything is nature, all is natural. To believe "religiously" in this aphorism eases the

apprehension of part of Steiner's works dealt with in this chapter, and with our intuitions about these

issues we will hopefully be able to give a new form to the practice and to the field of lighting design in

the near future.

Chapter Five Page 51

Chapter Five

▪ On Gibson's Ecological Light

James Gibson was an American born psychologist (b.1904, d. 1979), whose studies are of

growing importance, especially after being revisited by the so-called post-cognitivist movement in

psychology. Gibson has steered away from behaviourism first and then from cognitivism altogether.

My attention was drawn to his work as he provided a crucial input to the closure of my view

on light, integrating and completing all the views from the other authors, and logically belonging to

this group of authors, if logic had anything to do with it.

Gibson's take on light is direct and he does not try to explain it and/or our visual perception

resorting to an effect of light such as colour, like Goethe or Steiner, he focuses on the relationship

between animal and environment and one feature, both belonging to the environment and to oneself,

that makes such relation possible is light. But for us to understand this relationship and Gibson's view

entirely we must first enter the “ecological” realm of his approach to visual perception.

According to Gibson “psychology begins with the division between the inanimate and the

animate” (Gibson, 1986: 7), this definition, while looping back to Steiner 16, will place the discussion in

the ecological terms of “environment” and “animal”.

16 Remember Steiner's fourfold being, the first distinction was precisely between the lifeless and the living, progressing then on to the inanimate and the animate distinction that, for instance, separates animals from plants.

On Gibson's Ecological Light Page 52

The environment consists of the surroundings of animals... The fact is worth

remembering because it is often neglected that the words animal and environment make an

inseparable pair. Each term implies the other. No animal could exist without an environment

surrounding it. Equally, although not so obvious, an environment implies an animal... Every

animal... is a perceiver of the environment and a behaver in the environment.

(Gibson, 1986: 8)

Understanding all things under this law is by itself defining a new world view, for most of the

times we are led to believe that “the animal [we] is a highly organized part of the physical world but

still a part and still an object” (ibidem). As we will see later, the aim here is to destroy the cognitivist

view of ourselves in the world, with all that it entails for “light”. If we are indeed prone to accept this,

things will definitely assume simpler and truer contours.

Another important notion in Gibson's Ecological Approach is that the environment has its set

of units, that do not correspond to our SI units, or to any others. These units that Gibson is talking

about range, in the human scale of the environment, from the grain of sand or dust particle to the

mountain ridge or the line of the horizon17. What is most important, though, is that all of these

dimensions are “nested” into each others, like saying the grain of sand belongs to the margins of a

stream, running through a meadow in the valley, between two hills of a mountain ridge. These are all

human scales in an environment that we can perceive and behave in. The physical view of the world

deals with these scales but takes it to unimaginable, incomprehensible extremes. Nanometres or light-

years, are only achieved by means of reasoned thought and are not to be considered part of the

17 In this case, the orders of the human scale would range 106, from millimetre to kilometre.


environment.

What happens is that there has to be a permanent identification between oneself and the

environment, so these units in the environment must be the same as the units in our own animal

bodies.

The acts of animals themselves, like the events of the environment they perceive,

can be described at various levels, as subordinate and superordinate acts. And the duration of

animal acts is comparable to the duration of environmental events.

(Gibson; 1986: 12)

Furthermore, the environment is composed of persistence and change. In this mutual

relationship with the environment, the animal knows how to give meaning to the various states of

change and of persistence depending on the particular situation. This reveals that the animal's aim is to

permanently collect information from the environment to better relate to it. This is ultimately why our

senses are “designed” the way they are, condemning the computational view that refers to the sensory-

brain system as a flawed system, in that they are not reliable in the processing and acquiring of

information, by direct comparison to information analysis and instrument's outputs. Our sensory

systems evolved in a reciprocal relationship with the mind, with other parts of the body and with the

environment.


The Fallacy of Camera Vision

It is a common misconception of visual and/or perceptual sciences that the eye functions as a

static camera, while in fact, it is neither static nor a camera.

Let's address the first problem here. The eyes aren't static, if anything they are a specific case of

motion in the permanently moving body. For an animal to be kept still it takes a huge amount of

energy and concentration, while being perfectly immovable is simply impossible if one is alive. The

eyes move on their own, on a head that revolves on its own, which sits on top of a body that moves

parts individually or moves in a direction by combination of these individual movements. We can look

right facing left while running down the staircase, and because of this, vision is never static, it's a

“flowing perspective” a never ending flux of information, an “optic flow field” 18. A static perception of

the environment is not really perceiving an environment, nor does it happen in nature outside a

laboratory. Being able to look around and move about is one of the keys to the understanding of how

we perceive the environment.

Addressing the second problem in that statement, the eye is not a camera nor does it work like

a camera. This correspondence is easy to track down to the experiments with an excised eye from an

ox, when Kepler19 and other inquirers of the time “saw” an inverted scene in the back of the eye, whose

retina had been scraped off. From there to the scientific assumption that it is that retinal image that we

see, the distance was very short, but to great cost, namely finding out why after all we see things upside

18 Terminology suggested by Thompson, 1995.19 Johannes Kepler (b.1571, d.1630) was a leading German mathematician and astronomer, one of the precursors of the

scientific revolution that the Enlightenment period would generate during the XVII century.


up and not upside down, like in that retinal image. How classical science is able to create and rely on

these assumptions without loosing face and still remain dependable is for me a myth on its own. The

confusion here has to do with the miscegenation of two concepts: stimulation and stimulus

information.

Receptors are stimulated, whereas an organ is activated. There can be stimulation of

the retina by light without any activation of the eye by stimulus information... Visual

perception can fail not only for lack of stimulation but also for lack of stimulus information. In

homogeneous ambient darkness vision fails for lack of stimulation. In homogeneous ambient

light, vision fails for lack of information, even with adequate stimulation and corresponding

sensations.

(Gibson; 1986: 53)

Whereas an organ functions and “creates”, “receptors are passive and elementary” (ibidem). In

fact, the retinal image composes exactly the material of stimulation of the retina, the information

drawn from therein is what we “see”. But let's not forget that the retinal image is only one of the ways

of seeing of those found in nature. Vision means a different “visual” when talking about different

animals, but it always means a way to get information from the environment for all of them20 in a way

best suited to their survival skills.

20 For us and many mammals this means stereoscopic colour vision; for most insects or underwater species, stereoscopic colour vision wouldn't do any good, so these animals have evolved in a way that their visual sense actually provides useful information on the specific environmental conditions that they inhabit.


The Environment Unfolding

Perhaps aggravated by the conviction that what we see is nothing but a retinal image, we have

become completely “picture-minded” and “so dominated by pictorial thinking” that it becomes hard to

understand the environment without a pictorial representation of it. For this the “invention” of the

perspective contributed substantially, but keep in mind that perspective is nothing but an invention,

and I'm referring to the geometrical artificial perspective, not to the first meaning of the word

pertaining to the natural perspective21. The fact that this distinction is no longer used denounces just

how representative our understanding of the environment has become.

In our times we have determined vision in analogy to the laws of optics, and for that matter, to

the laws of geometry, but this is only a way to represent the world, not a way to apprehend it, as

anyone would understand in classical times.

Gibson's proposition is that we see by association, this is the reason why everything that we see

seems to fit our experience of the environment. This is to say that vision translates the nested

components and the nested dimensions of the environment also by means of a nested optic array.

Depth, volume, occlusion, motion, inclination, etc., are all associated properties present in a given

environment that need a grounding, an anchor, to be perceived in the way that we perceive them.

Ask yourself what is it that you see hiding the surroundings as you look out upon the

21 “Natural perspective”, as Gibson clarifies, was simply called perspectiva, the Latin word for what we now call “optics”. Ergo, the distinction made necessary with the term “perspective”, that has come to mean mostly a representational technique.


world – not darkness, surely not air, not nothing, but the ego22!

(Gibson; 1986: 112)

This anchor is what Ernst Mach called the “visual ego”23. This is another key factor in our

perception of the environment. Everything is perceived to the scale of our visual ego, which for all

purposes means what we know as our bodies. The body is our first referential in our relationship with

the environment. It is by direct comparison between “our sizes” and “our distances” that we are able to

perceive other sizes and distances present in the environment. A simple example would be the painter

who uses the tip of his thumb to balance the dimensions he is painting. By occluding the environment

with yourself you relate to it, you capture the structure present in the environment and these

informations compose what you see. “Information about the self accompanies information about the

environment, and the two are inseparable... one perceives the environment and coperceives oneself”

(Gibson; 1986: 126).

In addition to this, the way we perceive the environment is based as well in the capacity to

distinguish events.

The optical information for distinguishing various events can only be various

disturbances of the local structure of the optic array... deletion-accretion, shearing,

22 Here “ego” also maintains a strong connection to the previous chapter, for with Steiner, “ego” was the component of the being responsible for identity and for configuring the four mentioned dimensions of the being in an unique way. In other words, the “ego” is what we can identify with the “individual” for it confers “individuality” (Ego, the Latin word for “I”).

23 The “visual ego” is the recognition of material individuality against the environment.


transformation, magnification-minification, deformation, nullification, and substitution.

(Gibson; 1896: 110)

For all of that said before, we can understand how “perceiving is a psychosomatic act, not of

the mind or of the body but of a living observer” (Gibson; 1986: 240). It is difficult to object to this for

it seems that nothing can escape this definition. Although, regarding another crucial point in Gibson's

theory of perception, the theory of “pickup” as he likes to put it, discussion may arise.

According to the theory being proposed, perceiving is a registering of certain definite

dimensions of invariance in the stimulus flux together with definite parameters of

disturbance. The invariants are invariants of structure, and the disturbances are disturbances

of structure...

The invariants specify the persistence of the environment and of oneself. The

disturbances specify the chances in the environment and of oneself. A perceiver is aware of

her existence in a persisting environment and is also aware of her movements relative to the

environment, along with the motions of objects and nonrigid surfaces relative to the

environment. The term awareness is used to imply a direct pickup of the information, not

necessarily to imply consciousness.

(Gibson; 1986: 250)

Citing Thompson, Gibson claims that “the perceptual system resonates to the invariants in the

optic array” and “thus rejects the idea that perception is mediated by interference... and in this sense

information is simply picked up or attended to, not processed” (Thompson, 1995: 226).


The Structure of the Ambient Optic Array

Having mentioned this before, an expression that comes naturally upon describing the

perception of the environment, it is needed that we specify in what consists this ambient optic array

proposed by Gibson.

When talking about “ambient” we are referring to the condition of being completely

surrounded by an array of environmental information. This condition is verified, since we indeed

inhabit a closed field, but this field is not to be understood as a sum of points, but rather as a collection

of places. Hence, this ambient optic array begins to take a very strong and convenient shape, as a

collection, an array, of the multiple solid angles in our scanning field of view. This may relate to

classical optics but the innovation that Gibson introduces is the “nesting” of these solid angles that

reveal an environment filled by “illuminated surfaces”.

The structure of an optic array, so conceived, is without gaps. It does not consist of

points or spots that are discrete. It is completely filled... This means that the array is more

like a hierarchy than like a matrix and that it should not be analysed into a set of spots of

light... In an ambient hierarchical structure, loci are not defined by pairs of coordinates...

but by the relation of inclusion.

(Gibson; 1986: 68)

From this we can extract what is indeed meaningful from the concept of ambient optic array.

If we go back to Gibson's theory of “pickup”, the animal will automatically insert itself in the

environment by immediate pickup of the defining characteristics of that environment. The ambient


optic array is one major “carrier” of these informations. It is, among other sources, by resorting to the

ambient optic array that we integrate the environment and know how to act and react to it. This thesis

stands paramount in Gibson's Ecological Approach.

Ambient light can only be structured by something that surrounds the point of

observation, that is, by an environment... Only because ambient light is structured by the

substantial environment can it contain information about it.

(Gibson; 1986: 86)

Ambient light is, then, of chief importance in our relationship with our surroundings for “the

structure of the environment, for vision, is that of the ambient optic array” (Gibson; 1986: 249); which

to us, in the field of lighting, should say plenty. There is, however, a fortunate consequence of this

theory, one that I shall postulate later on, that allows us to consider in any circumstance, any form of

lighting as ambient lighting, as a general case, and any form of lighting as any other form of lighting as

a particular case24. Again, for the lighting designer, the consequences of this should be taken as a new

way of thinking lighting design.

The Affordance Theory

By introducing this concept of affordance25 Gibson smartly focused on a key aspect of our

24 Chapter Nine, “Ambient Lighting for the Conscientious Designer”.25 Notice the relation with the verb to afford.


“phenomenological”26 interaction with the environment. An affordance is not so difficult to define, it is

a perceptual apprehension that contains the information of the possibility of taking action towards,

upon or in an environment, or a specific place or part of that environment. An affordance is never

belonging to the environment exclusively for it depends on a specific observer for it to occur, hence an

affordance is neither objective nor subjective.

An affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both

if you like. An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to

understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behaviour. It is

both physical an psychical, yet neither.

(Gibson; 1979: 129)

By postulating this theory, any kind of mind-matter dualism becomes eradicated and, if

anything, Gibson further weaves together the notion that in our interaction with the environment,

exteroreception is always accompanied by proprioreception. I'd say that each is a needed condition to

the other for that interaction to take place, or as Gibson puts it: “the awareness of the world and of

one's complementary relations to the world are not separable” (Gibson; 1986: 141).

This effort in order to abolish any psychophysical dualism is very welcome, also in what

concerns light itself, for as you can predict we'll be able to abolish all the dualisms present in the

contemporary view on light, as Gibson has done with other kinds of dualistic incongruences present in

perception. “The hypothesis of information in ambient light to specify affordances is the culmination

26 My qualification, see the next chapter for clarification on this.


of ecological optics” (Gibson; 1986: 143). Light, with or without the structure of the ambient optic

array, becomes itself an affordance, conveyor of other affordances present in the environment.

For all this enunciated in this chapter, Gibson's contribution to this discussion proves

invaluable. It will help to bind coherently, substantially and meaningfully all aspects relating to light

and lighting, namely ambient light and ambient lighting, where ill practices have completely

obliterated the pertinence of the topic. Also, by linking intrinsically the notions of environment with

those of ambient optic array and perception, we realise that the act of seeing now makes a lot more

sense than as explained by physiologists or neurologists, and even other movements connected to the

psychology of perception.

Gibson was ingenious enough to put into words that what we are, perceive, think or do, we do

in relation to an environment, and it is in understanding the nature of this relation that we'll be able to

understand the “being-in-the-world”, another expression for Heidegger's dasein.

Chapter Six Page 63

Chapter Six

▪ The Correlations to Phenomenology

Well, I won't be so bold to pronounce that Gibson's Ecological Approach is at the same time a

phenomenological approach; as Gibson tries to distance himself in that way, but I can't help to notice

that Gibson was strongly influenced by phenomenology, especially after the existentialist movement.

There are several common denominators to Gibson and phenomenological thinkers such as

Heidegger, Sartre or Merleau-Ponty, and their take on perception, especially that's the case with

Merleau-Ponty, which was Gibson's contemporary.

It is important to mention that phenomenology is not, per se, a philosophical movement, and

there are many thinkers that regardless of their period already exhibited a phenomenological attitude

in understanding the “being-in-the-world” such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx or Niezsche.

Phenomenology acquires the shape of a metaphilosophy in that sense; it's not so much worried about

reaching assertive conclusions in the way other movements are, as it is worried with an attitude

towards the essential. Maybe for these reasons phenomenology has always been a philosophical

“branch” taken less seriously.

Phenomenology is the study of essences... which puts essences back into existence

and does not expect to arrive at an understanding of man and the world from any starting

point other than that of their 'facticity'. It is a transcendental philosophy which places in

abeyance the assertions arising out of the natural attitude..., but it is also a philosophy for

The Correlations to Phenomenology Page 64

which the world is 'already there' before reflection begins.

(Merleau-Ponty; 1962: vii)

Phenomenology Before Phenomenology

Given Merleau-Ponty's definition we can already understand how Gibson could be considered

a phenomenological thinker as well, but I'll be so bold to include Goethe and Steiner in that list, even if

one or the other focus more on different topics or levels of this dasein notion, their attitudes remain

fairly similar to my eyes, and they especially define that whatever is the result of our activities it

happens so as we are a part of the world and not some neutral extension of the world as rationalists or

empiricists would lead you to believe.

The chief gain from phenomenology is to have united extreme subjectivism and

extreme objectivism in its notion of the world or of rationality... To say that there exists

rationality is to say that perspectives blend, perceptions confirm each other, a meaning

emerges. But it should not be set in a separate realm, transposed into absolute Spirit, or into

the world in a realist sense.

(Merleau-Ponty; 1962: xxii)

Again, this further underlines my belief that someone as radical as Goethe or Steiner were

actually exercising a type of phenomenological style of thinking for they never detached the spirit from

the world in the way a rationalist would; in that way effectively disregarding the notions of objectivism

and subjectivism, even though at times it would be difficult to have a discourse that escaped that

Chapter Six Page 65

dualism27.

Light as a phenomenon28 comes many layers before reasoning, objectivism, empiricism,

materiality and scientific knowledge. Making this distinction between light-visual and light-physical is

valid, but only these many layers after the intuitive and immediate notions of in-mind and out-body,

constituting these a basic positioning in relation to the environment as the substratum for

phenomenology.

The out-body environment could still be perceived as a sum of an indeterminate quantity of

phenomenons, but the notion does not implicate inverisimilitude or unlikelihood, for the very

environment depends on that relationship that we maintain with it, and are part of, as the

environment itself is including us in its phenomenal appearance to our spirit.

27 This question of subjectivism/objectivism, which I consider a key topic in the discussion related to light, will be dealt with more properly in the next chapter.

28 Hereby, “phenomenon” means, following kantism, a “thing” as it appears to and is constructed by the spirit. In kantism a duality with “noumenon”, or thing-in-itself, occurs. I do not recognise the existence of things-in-themselves, because the implication of this does not hold any value or meaning. Mind you that the existence of things-in-themselves is the object field of science, but the very conception of “existence” is nothing but a property attributed to an object by the consciousness. Therefore, science exists in-mind also as a sub-product of spiritual activity which is based on the interpretation of phenomenons that occur also, and at the same time, at the environmental or out-body level. The duality found between an object and a subject is, again, something that can only be meaningful in-mind; noumenons are by definition “objects”; they may relate to the notions of materiality or immateriality, physicality or metaphysicality but they are not out-body, in the sense that they are still elaborations of the mind concerning that which has been “apprehended” (from apprehension: “the faculty or act of apprehending, esp. intuitive understanding; perception on a direct and immediate level”). The term “apprehension” was not employed lightly, for “reasoning” itself can be “apprehended” as a basic in-mind mechanism, on par with the so many other spiritual operations.


Convergences and Divergences

There are several points of convergence and divergence between these thinkers regarding

perception and even though some of them are irreconcilable others can be complementary. When,

according to Merleau-Ponty, “vision is already inhabited by a meaning” (Merleau-Ponty; 1962: 60), to

Goethe and Steiner this meaning is always created, and permanently recreated; whereas to Gibson, the

meaning never exists and it is not needed altogether. Yet, all of them refuse sensations as pure

impressions. “To see is to have colours or lights, to hear is to have sounds, to sense is to have qualities”

(Merleau-Ponty; 1962: 5), not quantities.

It seems to me that none of them would disagree with the following, also:

Thus, while the living body became an exterior without interior, subjectivity became

an interior without exterior, an impartial spectator. The naturalism of science and the

spiritualism of the universal constituting subject, to which reflection on science led, had this

in common, that they levelled out experience: in face of the constituting I, the empirical

selves are objects. The empirical Self is a hybrid notion, a mixture of in-itself [en soi] and for-

itself [pour soi] to which reflective philosophy would give no status... The ideality of the

object, the objectification of the living body, the placing of spirit in the axio-logical

dimension having no common measure with nature, such is the transparent philosophy arrived

at by pushing further along the route of knowledge opened up by perception. It could be held

that perception is an incipient science, science a methodical and complete perception, since

science was merely following uncritically the ideal of knowledge set up by the perceiving

thing.

(Merleau-Ponty; 1962: 65)

Chapter Six Page 67

This tells us that there is in fact a structure to science, but the structure in science is not that of

the world or of the environment, or whatever object it is studying, but it is the structure of our

consciousnesses, particularly of the subject or of a group of subjects. For all purposes this structure in

conscience is a reduction of the world.

Again, there is a convergence with what Gibson called “nesting” in the environment, and that

Merleau-Ponty, in the lines of Scheler, refers to as a “higher order founded in a lower one, and that in a

sense contains it, but at the same time takes it over and integrates it into new structures which cannot

be explained by those that are taken over” (Merleau-Ponty; 1963: xiii). Also, pertaining to this, we can

remember Steiner's fourfold being, denouncing his “nested” view of humans themselves as spiritual

animals. Merleau-Ponty, does however refuse the idea of the transcendental ego, which is a basic

notion on Steiner's spiritual view, and that would be, much later, also a notion defended by Husserl.

The term affordance, while coined by Gibson refers to a very phenomenological way of

thinking, without considering affordances themselves as a phenomenon or as relating to

phenomenons.

Human behaviour is neither a series of blind reactions to external “stimuli”, nor the

projection of acts which are motivated by pure ideas of a disembodied, worthless mind. It is

neither exclusively subjective nor exclusively objective, but a dialectical interchange

between man and the world, which cannot be adequately expressed in traditional causal

terms.

(Merleau-Ponty; 1963: xiv)


Although Gibson would immediately erase “dialectic” out of that definition, the aim for both is

radically the same, it seems. In any case, both would agree with the first part of that proposition, surely.

Concerning this, the weight that Steiner puts in the mind is enormous, obviously, but his view never

relies on “pure ideas”, in fact I'd say that he is strongly against that notion resorting to his own

arguments, which in parts would get extremely close to these of Merleau-Ponty:

Our experiences are interconnected and reveal to us real properties of the thing

itself.

Having learnt that the things of the perceived world are manifest to us in

experience, and not substances hidden behind a veil of appearances... their meaning is what

is given in our experience of them, it does not reside in their relationship to something else.

(Merleau-Ponty; 2004: 17-25)

In fact the only thing to add to what Merleau-Ponty says, is that Steiner largely bases the

nature of this experience at the level of the soul, which is for all purposes what we can infer from

Merleau-Ponty as well, and this actually seems to be the dimension that deserves the best of our

attention.

Another question that unites Goethe, Steiner, Gibson and Merleau-Ponty is related to reflex

behaviour, which all of them would refuse, although by proposing a different way of understanding

that level of behaviour. From all, respectively, we collect the notions of “intuition”, “awareness” and

“naive consciousness”. Now, keep in mind that they are not referring exactly to the same thing but I'd

say that they complement and interconnect with each others in respect to the immediate perception of

Chapter Six Page 69

the world, whereas the common belief favours intelligible or rational perception as a more effective

way to apprehend the world, when in fact apprehension implies direct, immediate perception. For this

reason I'd like to replace those proposals by only one that tries to broadly integrate them, the

unconscious perceptual, as opposed to the conscious perceptual.

The matter of perspectives treated by Gibson is also one of Merleau-Ponty's concerns. For

both, perspective means at the same time identity and richness, and never a failure or a problem to be

solved by statism in our relationship with the world. As Gibson sustains, (natural) perspective is what

enables us to understand and perceive the environment; in Merleau-Ponty's words:

Perspective does not appear to me as a subjective deformation of things but, on the

contrary, to be one of their properties, perhaps their essential property.


The discourses are undoubtedly parallel, with Gibson's being somewhat more sensu stricto, and

Merleau-Ponty's more sensu lato.

Despite the effort of unifying extreme subjectivism and extreme objectivism, phenomenology

refuses the dichotomy between mind and body, and approaches this duality with a spin:

Since an injury to the eyes is sufficient to eliminate vision, we must then see through

the body... it must be then that the body forms a screen between us and things.



This inference, while difficult to relate to the other thinkers, seems to be in one way or another

something that is underlying all their discourses, namely with the occluding visual ego mentioned

earlier. To me, this is difficult to swallow, although I'm still left with the conviction that, in the same

acception, the higher distinction we are able to perceive is in-mind and out-body, though I wouldn't

categorize the body as a “screen”, this is what itches me in Merleau-Ponty's duality. The body is at the

same time the mind as the mind is the body, and our behaviour denounces that intrinsic being which

is the mind-body. Merleau-Ponty further engages in other distinctions such as the “real” and the

“perceived” world; something that I dismiss entirely, as does Gibson, Goethe and Steiner.

The subject perceives in conformity with his body – as a coloured glass modifies what

the beam illuminates... but the body appears capable of fabricating a pseudo-perception. The

body must be the necessary intermediary between the real world and perception which are

henceforth dissociated from each other... The world is doubled: there will be the real world

as it is outside my body and the world as it is for me, numerically distinct from the first.


For me this is where Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology falls flat of what he proposes for

phenomenology, the study of essences. This crucial definition escapes the essence altogether while

trying to unify the apparent. Although, the first proposition is plausible, the subsequent conclusion is a

thesis that leaves the scope of phenomenology, and while this explanation isn't helpful at all, by

combining the apparently distant views of Steiner and Gibson, the problem is solved without leaving

its essential domain.

Chapter Seven Page 71

Chapter Seven

▪ The “I” in Light

As we were able to understand from reading the previous chapters, the term “light” and what it

normally refers to, never were very consensual and it usually never took a long time before somebody

came with a new alternative. This seems to be our condition regarding the intellectualized “light”.

In this chapter we won't try to propose a “new” understanding of the term “light”, but we will

try to clarify any doubts related to the use of the word and, perhaps due to this, slightly different

interpretations of already present understandings will be forged. We have to, at least, try to establish

how we should relate to the term in a meaningful and fruitful way, especially from the lighting

designer's perspective.

Since we move in the midst of concepts, let's employ and use them coherently, not only to

understand each others, but also to make us fully aware of what it implicates to work with “light” in

our tasks as lighting designers.

Physical Versus Visual

Someone like Evan Thompson, following Francisco Varela, takes a deep plunge into the realm

of cognitive science and philosophy of perception. This deep, exhausting, yet sturdy dissertation

related to “our” colour vision does not address the use of the term “light”, not even conflicting

The “I” in Light Page 72

understandings around it, but as a consequence, how light is shaped according to a certain theory of

perception.

At first, Thompson clearly points out the dilemma associated to the Newtonian legacy that

deals with the intellectualization of perception.

If we combine the Analytic and the Causal Theses, and apply them to colour we have

essentially the same account that Newton gave in the unnumbered Definition from his

Opticks:

a) The physical constitution of an object (i.e., the primary qualities of the object's

'insensible parts') explains how the object has a disposition to reflect selectively various types

of light rays.

b) The physical constitution of light explains how its rays have dispositions to excite

various types of processes in the perceiver ('motions in the sensorium').

c) These processes explain how we have various types of colour sensations

('sensations of these motions under the forms of colours').

(Thompson, 1995: 25)

Basically this systematization constitutes the “received view” presented in the last portion of

the second chapter; one that congregates both an empirical and a conceptual understanding on the

perception of colour as a “constituent” of light.

The empirical understanding establishes that objects display a natural aptitude, a natural

disposition to “look coloured”. This form of objectivism places colour closer to a physical property of

objects for they keep their disposition to look coloured even in the dark or where there's no observer to


acknowledge the fact that they “appear coloured” on top of their disposition.

What we have not addressed thus far is, perhaps, the most arguable premise, the one that links

the physical constitution of light with the perceived colour sensations. While the questions of

objectivism and subjectivism seem to be easily dealt with, the one that links both perspectives remains

the key to solve the whole puzzle.

The one thing that the Newton model cannot explain… is why a particular type of

physical cause should be associated with a particular colour. The Newton model cannot

explain the qualitative character of sensations – colours – and nothing else could, because

they are simple, beyond explanation. There could be no explanation of the fact that short

wave... should finally cause violet-blue... rather than some other colour.

(Westphal, 1987: 111)

This conclusion by Westphal, someone who can be easily identified with the Gothean school,

is actually quite pertinent, even though it seems to my eyes, quite an elementary assumption in the

vein of “why does honey taste like honey?”. Therefore, like Westphal mentions, there is no way to

explain simple events, we just acknowledge them as they are and provide them with some meaning, or

incorporate them in an idea, concept or memory of any kind. In this basic statement Westphal points

the way to another elementary popular aphorism: “that for which one has no remedy, remedied it is”.


Subjective Versus Objective

It is with this peace of mind that we arrive to the point that is more pertinent in this

discussion, the one that accepts the basic rules of the human intellect, and thus recognises that for all

“things” acknowledgeable one distinction remains, inside and outside. “Light” seems to suffer from

this problem as much as colour, and the so many concepts that are ultimately qualified as objects29

only because they are something towards which a cognitive act is directed upon.

This habit of the mind in splitting things into objective and subjective is a basic “mechanism”

that I do not wish to contradict, but we should capture from it what is indeed meaningful and relevant

for our experience of light and colour.

The objectivist/subjectivist view is the most commonly accepted contemporary view on how to

define light, either visually according to its strictly and purely subjective character, as sensations in the

observer's visual system; or as something that “exists” materially, that can be discretely measured and

described whether by instruments or by a special kind of analytical perception, commonly associated

with scientific methods.

Most often, the confusion pertaining to “light” related discussion, has to deal with the

miscegenation between this widely accepted ambivalent, yet deviant, conception that “light” “exists”

both physically and visually, something that seems taken via carbon paper from another discussion

concerning “light” in the scientific domain.

The term light has become increasingly used in sensu lato to refer to visible radiation,

29 Objectum: something thrown down or presented (to the mind); objectāre: to throw or put before, oppose.


embracing more and more electromagnetic radiation bands, except the gamma and radio portion of

the spectrum, although in many circumstances “light” acts as a true synonym of radiant energy and

electromagnetic radiation.

Again, related to what was presented at the beginning of this chapter, we are still suffering

from the consequences of the Newtonian model, whose imagery still prevails outside of very

circumspect communities dedicated specifically to deal with such questions concerning “light” either

visually or materially. One of the illuded followers, or better yet, establishers of these equivocal

definitions was the very CIE, which sustains that very old premise since 1938 (according to CIE - ILV

845-01-03) which associates light with any optical radiation capable of causing a visual sensation

directly. Naturally, the CIE would need to make a clarification of that definition stating, much like we

have already seen previously, that “light” is visible radiation as well as visual perception, based on the

assumption that they would mutually correspond to each other.

The conceptual understanding also mentioned by Thompson relates more to subjectivism and

“denies the more straightforward identification of colours with (non-physiological) physical states”

(Thompson 1995, 32). Thus, colour would be merely possible depending on subjective colour

experience in the observer's mind. On account of this “the concept of colour supplied to us by our

visual experience is that of an occurrent property of objects, but objectively there is no such property.”

(Thompson, 1995: 32).

These two previous perspectives adjust the validity of the sense of vision accordingly to one or

the other. While in the first our senses transmit and contribute to a correct cognition of the object's


properties, the second generates erroneous or doubtful cognition. To address this problematic, another

position was devised to meet in the middle ground, and I'm talking about content-dispositionalism, by

which seeing colour is seeing merely that disposition to look coloured, and not a property based on

such disposition. Thus, our colour experience would remain, to some extent, still grounded on

objectivism and on subjectivism, without failing to address the issue that experiencing colour has to be

dependent on the observer, but also, dependent on the object.

The United Light

So now we come to the amusing thought provoking point of having visible and invisible

“light”. This is a strange and a paradoxical logical construction, because “light” and “visible” are

interdependent concepts, if by “visible” we mean that given a degree of visual stimulation, an object

may be subjected to being perceived. Conversely, “visible” becomes a particular case of “perceptible”,

i.e. through vision, but it is important to clarify that while visibility is a required condition for visual

perceptibility, not all things visible are perceptible.

This was, as still is in most cases, the scenario surrounding the dichotomy of the word, but

what if this dichotomy is not the right one? We are for some reason still grounded to concepts, in the

attempt of “explaining” “light”, that are either contradictory, insufficient or meaningless by

themselves. Again, to me the focus should be fixed in the nature of our relationship with the

phenomenon instead of thought up conjectures; this is the reason why I try to firm a possible

combination between Gibson and Steiner, and the issue doesn't appear to be so problematic.


A central notion here is that perceptions are hypothesis, this is suggested by the fact

that the retinal images are open to an infinity of interpretations, and from the observed

phenomena of ambiguity.

(Gregory, 1998: 10)

Although I have introduced Gregory's take on this topic this was mainly to establish a means

of comparison, since interpretation as the formulation of meaning or acquiring of information, does

not necessarily imply the generation of a hypothesis as rationally understood by modern visual

psychology. The creation of hypothesis is only a very tiny portion of the visual process. Visual

perception relates more to the whole experience of the human being than to a view at the same time so

complicated and so non-essential in its associations with the modern neurophysiology jargon, while

still being an evident and conscious manifestation of the perceptual system working.

Despite this, Gibson dismisses this possibility of intervention by the perceiver:

I venture to suggest, in rejecting the assumption that perception is the processing of

inputs. Inputs mean sensory or afferent nerve impulses to the brain.

(Gibson, 1986:251)

“It is the Soul that sees and not the eyes,” Descartes said in order to get rid of the

“little images fluttering through the air.” The evolution of modern physiology shows that this

expression must be taken absolutely literally... It is the soul that sees and not the brain.



While Merleau-Ponty says something that Steiner could have said; Gibson on the other hand

correctly attacks the analytical and computational views on perception. Perceiving is not the

processing of inputs in the way that the contemporary computational model of perception considers it

to be; hence I'd be inclined to subscribe his view on the subject, although the rub here is that while he

tries to dissociate from perceiving as an intelligible or reasonable act, he fails to recognise that this is

only a part of our mental processes, and that other processes of the mind do not ask for this mediation

thought upon by the computational view of perception. These non-rational and non-intelligible

processes of the mind are leaps away from the elementary awareness or simple information pickup

that Gibson mentions, and while I'm not revoking these, I do find that they fall short of the ways of the

spiritual animal that I consider myself to be, as Steiner would put it.

In fact, Gibson proposes that there is no such thing as the private environment, the same

environment is shared by all observers for, after all, all animals possess some kind of mobility and,

therefore, they can be relating to the environment exactly from the same perspective as another

animal. What Gibson seems to accept with this is that the experiencing of the environment given the

same circumstances will be the same for one animal or another. I agree with Gibson that the nature of

this relation may be duplicated, but this does not mean that both relationships will be equivalent, let

alone equal, for one of the ends in that relationship has changed. I admit that for any other animal

Gibson's postulate would be correct, but if we go back to Steiner we have to admit that it is the spirit's

awareness of the soul that distinguishes us, subordinately as animals, from other animals. Gibson made

it clear he wanted to dismiss psychology from treating matters of the soul, but in my opinion he would


simply be out of a job by doing that.

So, part of Gibson's Ecological Approach gets in the way of this very important notion, that of

the “perceptual hypothesis”, as advocated by Richard Gregory, and this is furthermore aggravated by

Gibson's defence of the notion of seeing by visual information superordinated to visual stimulation.

Clarifying, visual stimulation is a condition sine qua non, that if met becomes dependent of the ability

of becoming visually informed.

Gibson, basing his theory on the behaviour of humans as animals in nature, reduces humans

to their condition, which is, no doubt, of animals in nature, but leaves aside the particularities of this

animal, in what concerns the point he was trying to establish. Not considering our perceptual and

spiritual particularities in an Ecological Approach to Visual Perception is about as serious as not

considering fishes' ability to breathe under water in their approach to swimming. Thus, this is a

denegation of the mediation and the interpretation that we are able to perform at the perceptual level,

which is very much a condition of the way of perceiving the environment, and very simply proved by

the ability of representation and recreation that we, still as animals, are capable of. Thus, we cannot

detract from recognizing the full validity, power and importance that of interpretation – in-mind.

This is not to say that Gibson is absolutely wrong, for this mediated way of perceiving the

environment isn't the only one, he simply did not encompass all valencies of the human animal in his

Ecological Approach. In fact, he sustains to full extent the immediate awareness of the environment,

which I directly link to one of the Three I's of Steiner, Intuition, although he seemingly fails to

acknowledge the other two.


This missing link in Gibson's approach removes the “animal” from the environment, and this

seems to me, following Thompson's and Varela's ideas, not very in tune with the whole Ecological

Approach and further denounces that dichotomy between subjectivism and objectivism that Gibson

and Turvey, among others, tried to solve with the use of terms like affordances and effectivities.

Recapitulating, an affordance is concisely and clearly described by Thompson as:

...a relational property of something in the environment: it consists in a particular

sort of opportunity for interaction that something in the environment has in relation to

certain animals. For example, trees, in relation to certain animals, afford climbing...

(Thompson, 1995: 224)

We can take Thompson's example to further stress that for lizards, as for monkeys or even

humans, trees as an affordance for climbing, are not relevant physically or psychically. It is not relevant

their molecular or cellular constituents not even our feelings, memories and experiences relating to

trees, except the fact that they offer the possibility of being climbed. Such an affordance to our visual

system is light; thus light can be merely considered an environmental or an out-body affordance. Or,

as Merleau-Ponty talks about phenomenal light, “a goal toward which my behaviour is directed”

(Merleau-Ponty; 1963: 7).

Related to an affordance but taking as departure point the animal instead of the environment,

an effectivity is, as defined by Turvey et al. “a relational property of an animal: it consists in a

particular sort of opportunity for interaction that the animal has in relation to the environment”


(Thompson, 1995: 224). In other words an effectivity is the animal's disposition to relate to a particular

affordance. This is easily demonstrated by the obvious distinctions found between someone whose

visual and perceptual systems are working, and someone who does not possess this faculty, such as a

blind person. Once again, for the blind person it does not matter what is the physical constitution of

light or even if it has one, the same must apply for the visual person.

Broadening the discussion a bit more, if we take Steiner's view on Light and Colour, relating it

to the soul, the spirit and the ego, along the way they manifest and operate are nothing more and

nothing less than an effectivity on their own, for conferring us with other effectivities altogether.

When we see, an affordance meets an effectivity, and while for this relation to happen light

does not matter physically of psychically, the nuance is that given the act of seeing, what we see and

how we relate to it, how we accommodate to it is nothing but psychical or spiritual, as you prefer. This

is the nature of our effectivity, spiritually understanding the affordance that is light. This is the light in-

mind.

Although some may still be tempted to see some kind of “duality” of light here, it is

tremendously important to stress that, when mentioned, this term could not be anything but a figure

of speech. In fact no one should see this as a duality of any sorts for it is not a matter of referring to a

dual state or quality of the same environmental component (out-body and in-mind at the same time)

and they're not opposing views of the same phenomenon.

Furthermore, the notions of in-mind and out-body, without being antagonistic or

complementary, are only fed by the need of positioning the conscience. They are weaved together as


consequences of dealing with an intricate relationship between “animal” and “environment” and are

but notions that position the “I”; Einstein would say “the observer”; in relation to that environment.

Light itself remains undivided and univocal whether looking at it from the in-mind

perspective or the out-body one. Light has to be, I infer, at the same time illuminant and illuminated,

and only like this can we see light and the environment, and light nested in the environment.

As far as I'm concerned this is the very own nature of light, (as of everything) the relationship

it sustains by affordance and effectivity with the ones that “use” it and depend on it, its beneficiaries, us

humans or the sun-flower.

I think it is now safe to close the book on discussing the subjective/objective ordeal, or how are

we to talk about light unequivocally, at least in what concerns the purposes and ambitions of this essay.

I hope that this discussion becomes a basic concern of every lighting designer for it is with light, the

relational phenomenon exclusively that we are working with. Acknowledging this is by itself a great

step for any lighting professional to take. These questions discussed here, hopefully will have positive

consequences for us, lighting designers, not for scientists, though, but the latter work with something

different.

Chapter Eight Page 83

Chapter Eight

▪ The Processes of Positioning and of Revealing

Let's pick up on that notion introduced in the previous chapter, of the in-mind consequences

of light.

Light is often mistaken for some sort of “revealing agent”; something that lifts the veil on

reality and because of this attribute there are even recurrently used metaphors to that extent like “to

shed some light on the subject” or “to see the things in a different light”. As it should be clear by now,

actually we see light all the time and nothing but that. We actually perceive light as well, as light itself

or as the idea of light. In fact, by perceiving light we are most of the times projecting light, mental

images of what we see or in some cases of what we think we are seeing, and thus we start recognizing

ideas and concepts that have their referent in the light apprehended in the environment. Does this

sound familiar at all? Obviously, when the Greeks were talking about the “fire of the eye”, they didn't

mean it literally, or at least I suppose they didn't.

Towards Revealing

All the things that are now surrounding you would be meaningless if you had not developed

your “visual vocabulary”, pretty much like when you don't understand a newly pronounced word. If

you think about it, the first thing you do when somebody presents you something you have never seen

The Processes of Positioning and of Revealing Page 84

before, your immediate and natural behaviour would be to touch that thing, feel the texture, the

hardness, the weight, operate with it and displace it, in the end you could say “so you call this a

'stapler', do you?”. From then on, whenever you see something remotely resembling like a stapler you'll

be inclined to make that assumption, even if some times mistakenly. If you never saw a stapler again in

your life, eventually you would forget the mental image of it, and you would become incapable of

recognizing another stapler once again.

This very same aspect of the mind's visual training was brought to my knowledge, while

researching for this paper, specifically on whether it made sense to consider light an affordance or to

demise it purely as something existing in the mind. The solution found rather intuitively was to go

interview some people deprived from the sense of vision.

One of the interviewees told me, when questioned about the matter of his dreams, not the

subjects or topics, but the actual “substance” of his dreams, that after acquiring a blinding infection in

his eyes by the age of eleven, he could for some time dream visually, but after a while complex visual

memories, such as people's faces, started to fade away; later on, visual memories of intermediate

complexity, such as a table or a chair, also vanished; until the point where even colours left his spirit as

well. All visual memories disappear; something that we take for completely granted in the world is

nothing but an illusion or, better said, simply one of its many appearances. Of course with this person,

as with another who has been blind congenitally, the substance of their dreams is not impoverished by

that fact, for they represent the environment inside with equal vivacity, only in other ways.

This conversation made me completely aware that light indeed has to be an affordance of the


environment and, it has to be an effectivity in us as well, only then can we say “let there be light”.

Furthermore, these dialogues made me understand that perceptual recognition is not being carried by

light as its direct consequence, but it is an operation done by both the spirit and the ego, a very

complex operation indeed, when you try to rationalize it. In such operation all stimuli informations

are put together as spiritual projections or representations, at the same time that they are compared to

our memories of suitable experiences to the case, and that eventually will incorporate or be identified

with existent ideas or concepts or will, on the other hand, create new ones altogether. In figurative

sense, the revealing process is like the process of opening a door. You have a key that should fit in a

given lock, when you find the respective lock you'll be able to open the door and pass through it; when

you have the key but can't find the lock where it fits, you're not able to go anywhere because the doors

where you can try the key stay shut, but it is only by opening a door that you can go through it. Thus,

you'll build an entire door with a lock to fit that key, so that this key finally has a purpose and a

meaning. If you have the door but can't find the key, probably you'll keep insisting until you can find

the key, or will move to a different door instead.

Because of all this the revealing process has to be “located” in-mind where the perceptual

system operates, and never in a component of the environment.

Towards Positioning

So what, then, do I mean by the process of positioning?

When considering the notion of “ambient optic array” introduced by Gibson, we must agree


that its purpose exists before the action of perceiving something. Ambient light will firstly position our

conscience inside our bodies in relation to the environment, it is light that materializes our beings

before it materializes space itself, which is but a consequence of our materialized conscience. This is

strongly connected to the presence of our bodies in our visual fields, and the particularity of

environment occlusion by the observer's body. Occlusion by the self and self occlusion makes us able

to relate to the environment in our very own nested ways, because then, this ambient optic array is

given an immediate meaning. It is light, as an effectivity and as an affordance at the same time, that

makes this possible.

Without light we are nothing but thoughts, memories, feelings and other creations of the

spirit, we are then at our soul and spiritual dimensions exclusively, the environment exists to us like in

a dream, immaterialised. The perception of light links us corporally to the space and creates a distinct

perspectives otherwise very difficult to conceive between in-mind and out-body, the reason by which I

recognise the metaphorical connection between light and knowledge30.

Let's imagine ourselves, for a moment, in absolute darkness. We feel whole, we are everything

and nothing exists outside. This is, not by coincidence, the reason for having eyelids and for only being

able to sleep in the dark.

On the other hand if we can picture a circumstance where we are exposed to an intense light,

let's say when you gaze a bright light source or just throw a glimpse at the Sun, you loose yourself, your

body and your conscience in the vastest and formless space, something that the mind can not cope

30 Please keep in mind that I have this opinion solely as a visual person; if I were deprived of the use of my visual system, I would maintain a different relationship with the environment and with myself altogether.


with. Just imagine being physically in the middle of the clouds right beneath a brightly lit blue sky.

Real World Examples

Obviously, those are rather extreme circumstances in everyday life, but I'll try to provide a

couple of examples regarding both scenarios.

As an amateur photographer I've had the pleasure of processing film in one of the darkest

environments known to mankind, the dark bathroom. Cutting and reeling the film in absolute

darkness is a very strange thing for someone who is used to perform such tasks in a luminous

environment. Even though my hands are doing it, those actions only seem to happen in my mind, not

in the otherwise out-body environment; even the sense of touch becomes less physical and more a

mental interpretation of these interactions with objects. I suppose that in complete darkness one

becomes the environment and the environment becomes oneself.

At the opposite end, having worked in the theatre, it was routine that I should do maintenance

on lighting equipment, and in one such occasion while closely inspecting the lens of a 2 kW profile

projector, a colleague inadvertently connected the wrong plug into the power outlet. I imagine the

most powerful drugs in the world would not prepare you in any way for that experience of being

exposed for one brief second to a blast of sharply focused light at short range. Immediately I lost all

awareness of space, the mind looses its ability to rationalize or feel anything and becomes just a big and

bright white void. You end up feeling alienated from your corporeal being much like in complete

darkness, but inversely if you can imagine that. You detach yourself completely from the environment,


and the very notion of environment disappears altogether.

Gradually you recuperate to your normal visual threshold and these effects disappear

completely after a while, but let's not forget that they are only extreme manifestations of something

that is always present within us, for it's intrinsic to our perceptual system, even if they occur more or

less noticeably.

But aren't these the extremes where vision fails? I suppose that this failure has its own value for

the mind, and now I should ask, are these the reasons why darker rooms are always associated with

introspection and why brighter rooms with dispossession. I, as most people, feel exactly how those

situations are telling me to feel, the stimulus originates a clear and distinct effect, soulfulness in the

first case and stressfulness in the second31.

So, while revealing deals with interpretation, and light is the “substance” which is interpreted,

positioning deals more with the conscience, with the activation of conscience and the disposition of

“becoming perceptual”. Positioning is deeply linked with Gibson's notion of ambient optical array and,

if you will, the very first perceptual layer, without it being intellectualized and perceived conceptually

as with revealing. Ergo, positioning situates us in the environment to be perceived, and it corresponds

to that “meeting” between an affordance and an effectivity.

A related inference is that it's due to positioning that the separation between oneself and

environment, and also the recognition of the body in function of a particular environment takes place.

Visual vocabulary isn't always required to perceive the environment. Visual vocabulary deals

31 An idea to keep in mind while reading Chapter Ten.


with the “objects of perception” rather than with perception itself. At the first perceptual layer, we

aren't so much concerned with the “objects of perception” but with what makes up those “objects”.

Surfaces, contours, volumes, textures, relations of occlusion and motion. This situation relates to the

unconscious perceptual and, again, with the process of positioning; whereas the visual vocabulary

relates more to the conscious perceptual and, consequently, with the process of revealing.

From the lighting designer's point of view, this means that questions pertaining to both

positioning and revealing should be addressed with dedicated labour, focusing attention on some

aspects more than others depending on what is required by the aim of the project. Light exists as

different “lights” in both situations. In the conscious perceptual as an object of perception, and in the

unconscious perceptual as the ambient optic array. Light is to the lighting designer, in the “conscious

perceptual” realm, a design exercise. Light as “unconscious perceptual” is to the lighting designer the

installed ambient light.

Chapter Nine Page 90

Chapter Nine

▪ Ambient Lighting for the Conscientious Designer

Some purists would say that ambient lighting is merely the lighting provided by natural

sources or, in other words, not artificial lighting, and this refers to light coming from the sun and the

sky, coming from the moon and the starred sky at night and all their eventual reflections in the

surrounding environment, clouds, water, grass and so on. These purists are not so incoherent, there is,

in fact, a strong foundation for this view that lies directly attached to the first meaning of the word

ambient32, but also to the kind of resulting light given the natural implications of a concept such as this

one. Thus, in this sense I understand and support a purist's view, especially in what concerns the

second part of the proposition presented before, the part that relates to the qualities of the resulting

implicated light.

Despite this, purists have the amazing ability of hugely disregarding spaced out time frames,

different cultural contexts, different needs and uses of lighting accompanied by a parallel technological

development in the lighting equipment. Most importantly a purist's view disregards the fact that

lighting has changed or “evolved” from a spontaneous and somewhat empirical activity whose know-

how would have been transmitted very scarcely via documentation throughout history, but could have

been very profusely transmitted by orality to the point that there would have been no need to question

32 In my native tongue “ambient” and “environment” are, for all purposes, the same word and, since we think as we speak, for me it is clearly an imperative to always associate these notions when referring to “ambient lighting”.

Ambient Lighting for the Conscientious Designer Page 91

the way of lighting up a space, for the answer would be spontaneous or traditional.

The Occurrence of Lighting and of Ambient Lighting

So far, this discussion may have been broad and a bit confusing, but such was intended. If we

need to resort to a concept to present a proposition we need to clarify the concept to a point that it

becomes unequivocal. Thus the intention here is to clarify “ambient lighting” in a way that the

definition is circumspect, self sufficient and valid in different contexts where its object remains the

same, i.e. ambient lighting as a concept, is, was, and should always be the same, for a concept needs its

identity to become acknowledgeable.

At this point it is likely that you've already argued that since pre-historical times humans have

the ability to control light in the environment by usage of simple instruments, such as torches, and

therefore exercise the act of lighting; true, but resorting to the purists view once again, this wouldn't

have been a valid form of ambient lighting, even though it is the artificial use of natural light as a

consequence of burning fire33.

Throughout the centuries lighting up spaces, namely indoors, would be strongly connected to

the actual architectural characteristics of a building, this means that the most effective and reliable way

of lighting an indoor space was strongly connected with the architectural interface with the outside:

wall, no wall or transparent/translucent medium. This use of ambient light naturally confers a very

33 This is a false question as all light is emitted naturally, as consequence of a specific natural phenomenon and it is my conviction that this suffices to abolish the “recently” created distinction between natural and artificial light, for in fact, light itself could never be man-made, only lighting fits this description, since it is light devised or used intentionally.


strong individual character to each space, given that each of these spaces, even in the same building,

will relate to the outside ambient light in a very specific way by the orientation, size, relative

positioning and interface material of present openings.

The nature of this relationship would obviously become very much associated with the

development of building engineering and technological abilities to an extent that, for instance, at some

point it became possible to create much larger openings without affecting the stability of the building's

structure. It became possible to create differently shaped openings and on different places of the

room's wall and, at another level, it became possible to change the quality of the interface material. The

range of solutions made available by these new options, made it possible to develop a better planning

for the relationship between indoor space and ambient light outside, which, inside the building would

give rise to an always renewed and distinct space by its perpetual cyclic changes.

This is a very important notion for it arranges the possibility of creating a conceptual

distinction between outside ambient light and the inside ambient light, to the latter we already called

“installed ambient light”, which constitutes the “matter” of our ambient lighting. Thus, ambient

lighting is quite simply the intentional use and also, in some cases, the manipulation of ambient light34.

Since many years now, ambient lighting degenerated from a consequence to a motivation or

even to a mere design concept. A brief survey on the web immediately gives feedback on the popular

belief regarding these terms, most of which are accepted and repeated by professionals themselves.

34 Here it becomes apparent the need for a good understanding of the expression “ambient light”, thoroughly discussed in prior chapters.


Definition: Ambient lighting is a general illumination that comes from all directions in

a room that has no visible source. This type of lighting is in contrast to directional lighting.

By Pamela Cole Harris, for about.com Guide

Definition: Light that comes from all directions. Contrast with "directional lighting",

which is made up of a light source with parallel light rays that do not diminish with distance.

Also, contrast with "positional lighting", in which the rays are not parallel, but diminish in

intensity from the source.

Found at Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com

Definition: Ambient lighting sets the mood for the space, and this can include natural

lighting, accent lighting or candle light.

By Daniel Sawyer, for ehow.com

The main purpose of the presentation of these definitions was to convey herewith the type of

formatting that is arranged by cultural context.

Now, most of these examples characterize “ambient lighting” by comparison to other lighting

methods or techniques, and while they seem perfectly in tune with the generic ideas on ambient

lighting, they provide nothing but a description of the use of lighting that is commonly referred to, by

means of simplification, “ambient lighting”. I could further generalise by stating that ambient lighting

is a kind of volumetric/spatial form of lighting without imposing light sources and that carries


somewhat of a mood by level and tone. This definition is, however, just about a definition for any

lighting that we can be exposed to, otherwise we would be assuming that our perception of light is not

volumetric or spatial35 and that it never carries the weight of a mood if it is not designed to carry it,

being more or less imposing depending on how the observer positionally relates to it.

Definition: Ambient light provides general lighting of the visual environment.

Architecture, objects and people in the environment are visible which allows orientation,

work and communication.

ERCO Handbook of Lighting Design, 272

This definition proposed by ERCO in their Handbook of Lighting Design, only leads us to

believe that there is some connection, not very well explained, that associates ambient light with

general lighting. This notion is by far limited, incomplete and misleading.

Yet, on another research attempt I've found the following:

Definition: In photography and cinematography, available light or ambient light refers

to any source of light that is not explicitly supplied by the photographer for the purpose of

taking photos. The term usually refers to sources of light that are already available naturally

(e.g. the sun, moon, lightning) or artificial light already being used (e.g. to light a room). It

generally excludes flashes.

Found at wikipedia.com, redirected from “ambient lighting”

35 When dealing with architectural lighting the perception of the lit environment has to meet this condition. This does not constitute a condition, though, in certain environments.


Strangely enough, the definition that seems to be more reliable, in this set of five definitions, is

the last one, and so it seems that the use of lighting in the arts is more in touch with the real

understanding of this phenomenon than our ordinary, everyday use of the same phenomenon.

The Perceptual Scaling Ability

Light itself doesn't have function, but illumination can be defined as a conscientious

manipulation of light to fit a purpose, then illumination will always exist according to a function that

will justify it. The same occurs with this illumination type addressed as “ambient lighting”, with the

distinct characteristic being that its function is achieved merely with its encounter with us.

Let's see, whereas task lighting, accent lighting, decorative lighting and others, are there only to

bright something up for our perception, ambient lighting is there to light up the environment and is

but a consequence of the lit environment, and in doing so, it is to the positioning of the conscience that

it relates to. In other words, we could say that ambient lighting is the light that is or, like mentioned

before, the installed light, for its purpose may be disregarded when we are not being exposed to it.

A consequence of this, the most obvious one, is that any type of lighting will be regarded as

ambient lighting at some given point depending on the kind of relationship we maintain with it.

We can gather from this discussion that “ambient lighting” is a term coined to describe the

relation and the attitude we sustain with and towards a lit environment in the form and structure of

the ambient optic array, rather than the actual luminous state of a region in space. In addition to this,

by means of this dynamic relationship, that we can consider as an optic flow field, we can “zoom in” or


“zoom out” to different layers of perception of a given environment and the components it is

comprised of. This perceptual scaling ability is directly related to the perception of different layers of

nesting in an environment, in the present case, we will take it as light becoming an object of

perception, although we would simply react to it as an affordance present in the environment.

While this is still a fairly simple notion, I don't think that many people realise this, or the

potential it has to develop a new frame of mind when dealing with lighting, that is to scale illumination

and its purposes based on the natural perspective of the beneficiaries, we all, and all the particularities

that reside within us.

Immediately, it comes to mind that a general purpose lighting can become decorative lighting

for the same building when viewed from the outside at a distance; or that accent lighting in a shop

display window can become task lighting for a tourist who wishes to read a map on a dark street; and

the sun, our main source of light, we can relate to it virtually in any way possible. First and foremost it

is an icon of ambient light, but it can function as well as a general purpose light source in a building

designed for it, or as task lighting by a window where we can enjoy a cup of tea whilst reading a book

by one of our favourite authors; it can be used to convey information such as with a sun dial, the most

ancient form of informative lighting; it is symbolic, narrative, dramatic lighting in churches; it is

spectacular lighting by sunrise, sunsets and when cutting shafts through the clouds; it is spatial and

volumetric lighting by its endless light/shadow creations and still the first and undisputed main source

for architectural lighting and, well, pretty much for anything else.

So, to say that the sun is merely the most important source of natural light in the planet, now


seems an understatement for it throws away what is more important about the light of the star, the

nature of our relationship with it as humans.

I hope it is clear by now that in any way an illumination is designed to be, there is for sure a

scaling point where it exists in relation to us in another way than its devised purpose, if it ever had one,

and at this scaling point it will always be, no more and no less than ambient lighting. In other words, it

is the bottommost perceptual layer, on top of which all other layers of visual perception will be stacked.

Even if this bottom layer is difficult to conscientiously grasp, due to its escaping nature, it is all the

more apparent when scaling between perceptual layers, and this is where we need to conceptualize it.

Although realising some parallels in the previous notion that combines the optic flow field and

the perceptual scaling ability, I cannot establish a direct link there; I'd rather assume that the

perceptual scaling ability is my take on what I think Gibson's Ecological View fails. Whereas Gibson's

flow field pertains to transformations in the optic array over time, mine relates to different

interpretations of the optic arrays, over time and space, or regardless. For convenient identification I

will directly link my notion of ambient light being at the unconscious perceptual level with this one of

ambient optic array, caveating, nonetheless, that while they're not exactly the same, they legitimately

imply one another.

This is how ambient light can radically be linked to the unconscious perceptual and to the

conscious perceptual at the same time. If at the first level we are not even aware of its presence and

how we relate to it, we react to and apprehend the environment intuitively; at the second level we

become perfectly aware that by filtering ambient light through this perceptual scaling ability we are


able to identify each component in the ambient optic array's structure and its role in the resulting

ambient light. In this we can find the justification for considering any lighting situation simply another

perspective on the same ambient light, simply another ambient optic array, no matter the use that we

are requiring from that specific lighting situation, it will always be ambient lighting before and after

everything else.

This is of the utmost importance because when the lighting designer realises this he will not be

furnishing a group of desks in an office floor with several individual task lights, he will be creating

ambient lighting at the desk perspective as well as at the room entrance perspective, or even from the

outside of the building perspective. The environment both at the entrance of the room or at the desk is

the same, only seen from a different perspective, and structured by a different ambient optic array.

Reflecting the implications of this frame of mind in lighting is a required change if we want to

effectively understand a lighting design to the human scale.

The perceptual scaling ability is not only a theoretical belief, it's a given fact that applies not

only to light but to any object of perception. Also, in itself, perceptual scaling encompasses the optic

flow field as it becomes a flow field on its own. It is the nature of this relationship, the one that links

the apprehended environment to a given ambient optic array, all that matters in the role of lighting.

Chapter Ten Page 99

Chapter Ten

▪ The Phenomenology of the Perceived Light

We have thus reached a point where we should try to condense the implications that this

frame of mind encompasses, for it is in understanding our relationship with light that we will be able

to pursue a lighting practice with more confidence; but this was only made possible by creating a

tabula rasa.

There is a sensible way to look at things and this is what I aim to achieve with this chapter. Not

exactly “teach” the best practice but the conditions for the best practice. In fairness, no one can be so

presumptuous to provide an absolute best practice, for this can never be achieved even in theory. Every

practice depends upon the accommodation of the sensibility of the practitioner to the case at hand.

This sensibility can be developed, especially if you look at it as an effectivity having Steiner's, Gibson's

and Merleau-Ponty's thoughts as reference, and along those coordinates, by focusing on the essence of

lighting, surely we can stimulate better lighting practices.

Right now, we just need to keep in mind the notion that when we see, light is reverberating

between us and the environment, and that, conversely, we are reverberating to it as well as to the

environment, according to Gibson's idea of the structure of the ambient optic array. Also, that the

nature of this relationship is yet of a phenomenological kind and, thus, I wish to propose the notion of

The Phenomenology of the Perceived Light Page 100

“phenomenological capabilities in light”36. Notice that if I'm talking of a phenomenological capability, I

could only be referring to our human understanding upon the nature of something that we regard as

being phenomenological. Light, or the environment are phenomenons merely in the sense that they

manifest to phenomenological animals, and such are humans.

Now that I've cleared the meaning of this expression, I'm sure that the notions behind the

phenomenological capabilities in light, PCiL for short, won't be so confusing.

Introducing the PCiL

Often, when we speak about light we find ourselves speaking about it as if it were a foreign

body, an object, and then all the discourse would be based on a circumstantial relationship with it,

leaning on a series of assumptions that mould our beliefs on the topic and that have been hitherto

thoroughly discussed. The concept behind the PCiL is that when we speak about light we should be

constantly reminded of just how vital this relationship is, of how seeing is reverberating to and with

the environment. At this basilar level, the PCiL occur even without perception taking its place, the

mere awareness of the presence of light is evidently enough to cause a response, a reaction. Taking a

simple example as the one provided by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception, a simple

beam of light in the dark is enough to direct our attention, even if it isn't illuminating anything but

invisible air, the awareness of its motion will condition our behaviour as we will most certainly follow

this beam with our eyes, again, reverberating to it.

36 Mind you that for perfect accuracy I should be referring to the “phenomenological capabilities of humans in relating to an environment regarding light”.

Chapter Ten Page 101

When perception is involved, there is, of course, reverberation happening, but given the

meaning of perceiving, I'd say that this relationship gets intensified, that is, by informed selection of

envelopes37 in the environment that themselves serve to inform, we would at this level resonate to the

environment. These terms “reverberating” and “resonating” are not employed trivially, they are based

mostly on how things embrace the sounds in the environment; in fact we can only ear because there is

a specific portion of our bodies devoted to resonate and reverberate to and with the environment, that

is also the case with light and this, to me, is the most capable description of its importance.

Like so, it should be expected that it would have its direct effects not only at the visual level,

but also at other valencies of our existence, like the emotional and behavioural levels, and at the

soundness, of both mind and body. In this way, we have to admit that light effectively has a major

repercussion in the long term but also in the short term, depending on whether the relationship is

more violent or more candid.

With the convenient sensibility, these effects can be detected at whatever level one considers

light to be of relevance to what one is experiencing. For instance, light won't surely affect my smelling

of the environment directly, but light will affect my mood when smelling the environment,

consequently playing a decisive and integral role in the perception of an environment. Actually, this is

not so extraordinary, it's just as if one would take Gestalt's theories and extend them manifold for a

complete approach to the human being's dimensions, instead of dealing exclusively with the visual

dimension, for perception is substantially, but not exclusively, visual.

37 “Envelopes” as used by Gibson, pertaining to solid angles that have the shape of individual contours nested inside the perceptual field.


Regarding these PCiL effects I tend to categorize them in four kinds:

– Visual PCiL, the degree of effects that relate to visual comfort and visual aesthetics are

considered here;

– Mood PCiL, the degree of effects that relate to emotions and behaviour are considered

here;

– Well Being PCiL, the degree of effects that relate to the soundness of mind and body are

considered here.

– Recursive PCiL, the degree of effects that depend on the other degrees of effects.

Upon a closer look these categories are very much related to what are commonly accepted

claims in the field, here proposed by Anders Liljefors, which I will transcribe for ease of reference:

Level I

directly visual: → spatiality (safety, security, orientation)

→ visibility (acuity, speed, certainty, etc.)

indirectly visual: → atmosphere

(stimulance, well being, amenity)

non visual: → hormonal balance

(hormonal balance, depression)

(Liljefors, 1999: 37)


In fact, excluding the fourth category of Recursive PCiL, one might be tempted to try a direct

comparison between both, and while that does not occur, leaning on Liljefors' table will help to clarify

the main distinctions.

On the Visual PCiL and Its Effects

The Visual PCiL are by far the most studied PCiL effects. This is probably based on the

importance of the representational and illustrative ways of image oriented modern thinking, but also

because of how directly these effects manifest. I'm not saying that this importance is misguided, but we

mustn't forget that light doesn't manifest in us strictly visually; there are other components to the PCiL

effects when dealing with light as a complete manifestation to and of the being.

Furthermore, the problem here is that at some point the Visual PCiL effects became quantities

and thus, measurable by instruments. These quantities have since been regulated by lighting

organizations that base their ruling and regulations on science and statistic, but also, not so scarcely,

on other interests.

When we talk about light, it is a necessary inference that we utilize it to inform ourselves of

“ourselves in the environment”, this is one important role that we attribute to light and lighting. This

positioning of the consciousness resorts to the ability of perceiving special cases of light-colour

manifestations in the ambient optic array: brightness, brightness distribution over space and over time,

shadows and reflections, colour of light and colour of surfaces. The necessary effect associated to these

conditions will be at all times directly connected to visual comfort, for the PCiL effects regarded here


are a comfort function of visual perception.

In these simple terms, the lighting designer's task is to contribute to the occurrence of comfort

in the optic flow field. The consequences of this will determine whether the environment is perceived

more or less immediately, that means with a higher or lower degree of interpretation; more or less

precisely in terms of position, detail and constancy, as compared to daylight information. These will

contribute decisively for a stronger or weaker sense of positioning and of revealing, which should be

the objective when enforcing this PCiL.

To improve the degree of comfort, it is ideal that common environments and/or situations are

acknowledged instantly at the unconscious perceptual level, because the unconscious perceptual

precedes the conscious perceptual, the more conscientious they become, the more mediated they are,

the more effort is required for positioning and also the more perceptual effort38 is required for

revealing.

So far, the Visual PCiL matches almost completely Liljefors' directly visual, with the exception

that I don't find the need for separating visibility from spatiality. Spatiality is a sense occurring from

within positioning and this crucially depends on visibility.

But the Visual PCiL is not only creating a perceptual comfort effect; lighting, by the Visual

PCiL has also an aesthetic function, that relates to our aesthetic sense, and this is light's aesthetic effect

on us, at the conscious perceptual level, as an object of perception.

38 Pay attention to the close connection between this notion and the upcoming Well Being PCiL effects.


Strangely enough, it is frequent that this effect is left aside when discussing lighting. In purely

speculative terms, I suppose that talking about how light makes things prettier is diminishing the (self)

respect and the (self) importance to and of the field. This is very disturbing because while most

lighting designers are talking about the perceptual comfort effect and other, they are mostly working

on the aesthetic effect for their projects.

There are a few questions that need to be addressed, though. Lighting to the human scale has

to encompass the reality that we are aesthetic beings at the conscious perceptual level, the mind

confers an aesthetic value to all perceived components of the environment and, to another degree, to

the composition of the environment. This is ultimately the reason why there are great portrait and

landscape photographs of identical aesthetic value, being that it is the ambient light that configures

and structures the global sense of aestheticism for both scenes. Ergo, even if it isn't at all premeditated,

any lighting design will have its inherent aesthetic effect and consequent aesthetic value; thus, the

designer might as well take advantage of this condition.

Another important aspect to clear up is that aestheticism is not dealing with beauty or

ugliness, if it were, this would be a really pointless discussion. An aesthetic piece can be inasmuch

beautiful as ugly, being that these are merely personal qualifications on a given aesthetic value that

remains unchanged with contradictory opinions. The degree of aesthetic value is what enables these

qualifications to occur.

To enforce this effect, the lighting designer currently has several parameters or attributes upon

which he/she can intervene, namely:


– at the luminaire (beam) level: beam intensity and beam colour; beam shape (by cutting or

texturing); beam angle and positioning; beam sharpness or diffusion.

– at the scene (multiple beam) level: contrast composition and gradient composition; colour

composition; senses of depth and height; uniformity, patterny, symmetry and continuity

or irregularity in distribution.

– at the temporal (scene succession) level: transitions (characterized by fade in time, sustain

time and fade out time); cross-fading (overlapped fading); apparent motion and actual

motion. These apply to any of the beam or multiple beam attributes.

One might find this Visual PCiL effect of secondary importance, but I propose that while of

relative direct importance, it will become very important at a recursive level.

On the Mood PCiL and Its Effects

Going back to Liljefors's table, the Mood PCiL would compare to Liljefors' atmosphere. I

recognise that there is a huge temptation to call this indirectly visual “atmosphere”, but this term is

very much connected to “ambient”, meaning that it describes an involving and surrounding situation,

an involving environment, and this seems to be a pleonasm that misses the point.

The PCiL are pertinent only in the way that they relate to us, like Goethe has well put it, light

and colour are at all times significant. Therefore, at this level, light shall relate to us in its mood

capability, namely by its emotional and behavioural effects. Here, the term “mood” is to be understood


broadly, as the disposition for something, the disposition to act towards the environment and to feel

the environment.

As it is easy to understand, light is a strong element in our perceived environment, and by

“strong” I mean consequent to us. Furthermore, light's consequences are insurmountable at its

ambient optic array level, we cannot feel but compelled by it, especially because it manifests mostly at

an unconscious perceptual level, but even at the conscious perceptual its repercussions are notable.

Each level affects, respectively, our behaviours and our emotions, we then have, by definition, our

behaviour chiefly shaped by the unconscious perceptual Mood PCiL, and our emotions chiefly shaped

by the conscious perceptual Mood PCiL. These effects can be explored by exceptionally good architects

manipulating daylight, and by exceptionally good lighting designers that underline their lighting

designs with a “hidden message”, both effectively creating moods and wills in the users of a given

space.

For instance, the case where daylight amply falls on certain regions of an indoor space,

creating lit areas and dim areas, the exceptionally good architect is capable of predicting light's

“behaviour” in this projected space of volumes and surfaces. The user of the space will immediately

“read” this ambient optic array and unconsciously guide himself/herself through the lit areas, avoiding

dark corners, narrow passages, platform edges and low ceilings. The ambient optic array is effectively

and inadvertently orienting our behaviour, making us go somewhere before we even want to. This

effect can be replicated using a lighting system, normally to obtain the same results, let's say in an

public lighting scheme installed in the city's dark streets.


On the other hand we can be in a space where a lighting designer has created a terrific

composition where colours fade to darkness in a “mist” of diffusion from top to bottom, eliminating

the constant awareness of the floor and diverting our attention to the vertical limits of the space; we

then walk into a room where multiple spots of bright light and their reflections propagate through the

space accentuating the optical sense of depth, creating high contrast areas so that as we walk we

perceive to be constantly in the direction of a brighter and a darker space at the same time, in an

expressionistic tension between those extremes. In these spaces we probably won't feel the need to

behave in any specific way, but we will feel compelled to emotionally experience that environment

once we consciously perceive it. The ambient optic array may be “telling” us via the Mood PCiL to feel

soothed, overwhelmed, active, weary, dreamy, alienated, etc., and these feelings/emotions, while

experienced individually can be devised to affect collectively, by the principles of emotional induction

which guide the practices of light-colour therapy.

Mood orchestration is not only an exclusive of lighting designers, it's above all a function

found in nature. No one is left indifferent before the dramatic and exciting effect of seeing strikingly

blue daylight cutting through the opening upon exiting a dark cave, or before the overwhelming

vastness of the ocean blue or, finally, immersed in the romantic melancholy of the dense autumn

colours surrounding us in a cherry orchard.

These PCiL effects may be regarded by some as fancy unnecessary additions to a lighting

design, but since I already explained that the Mood PCiL is having its strongest manifestations in the

natural environment, it becomes all the more apparent that the absence of such feature is more of a


deficit in a lighting design than they are expendable in nature. Furthermore, if the Mood PCiL effects

are not convincing by themselves, maybe their recursive effects will be sufficient to confer them with

the attention they righteously deserve. Conversely, I would suggest that these PCiL became an

important concern for the lighting designer, or architect, since they will always be present in some

underdeveloped way, and by far a lot less ineffective than they would be if given proper care and

attention. If this is not at all the concern of the lighting designer, at least the effort in the design should

be directed to neutralize the Mood PCiL altogether, preventing possible negative effects to the users of

the space.

Finally, we have to understand that even though our behaviour is mostly dependent on

unconscious perceptual Mood PCiL and our emotions are mostly dependent on the conscious

perceptual Mood PCiL, this is not to say that each doesn't present a bit of the other to some degree, i.e.

unconscious perceptual Mood PCiL can also affect our emotions, and conscious perceptual Mood

PCiL can surely affect our behaviour.

On the Well Being PCiL and Its Effects

It is a huge temptation these days, for many people in the field to approach the question of well

being in a medical sort of way, and I mean that by considering light as a physical substance, certain

positive interactions with our physiology would be found to take place. Obviously in the realm of this

paper this can't occur, nor do I confer any validity to a scientific theory which has delineated very well

what it aims to achieve, but is at all unaware of how certain figures appear, and, in addition, presents


itself very limited in the interpretation of the reasons for their appearance.

Once again, I strive for the simple and meaningful explanation, the nature of our relationship

with light. We have been, since 2.4 million years ago39 adapted to daylight and fire light, it seems

obvious that during this period of time everything in the body and in the mind became adapted to

these qualities of light found in an environment lit by the sun, sky and overcast sky, or by fire. Since a

quality is not measurable, it doesn't matter at all the quantities measured by photometry, though some

may see there an evident connection that really doesn't matter to the discussion.

Another aspect to keep in mind is that during these 2.4 million years we have been exposed to

daylight, proportionally and consistently, a lot more than to combustion produced lighting.

If we look at what happened in the past few centuries, exposure to combustion produced

lighting gradually increased when moving from solid combustion to fluid combustion (oil and gas),

and then electrically produced lighting came and changed everything as we knew it.

First, with the introduction of incandescent bulbs the exposure to a special case of solid

combustion produced lighting slowly increased, but by the mid XX century, with the vulgarization of

discharge produced lighting, the exposure to fluorescent light became exponential. With the

aggravation that the qualities of this light have nothing to do with those of combustion produced

lighting, let alone with daylight. As if this wasn't enough, we became, in general terms, more exposed

to lighting produced by artificial sources than ever before, with great impact in our contact with the

outdoor environment and our sleeping cycles.

39 The age attributed to the oldest Homo Habilis, the first of the Homo kind. The latest evolutionary stadium of the species, the Homo Sapiens Sapiens, is “only” two hundred thousand years old, though.


Lighting originated from artificial sources had a great repercussion in our daily lives, in our

societies and cultures, but it's been only a few decades since it has acquired a massive presence, it is

everywhere at all times, yet daylight and fire light have been around for millions of years. It's not

surprising that directly or indirectly fuelled by the paradigm shift in lighting during the XX century 40

psychological and emotional disorders became recognised as an actual physical illnesses, and part of

our everyday lexicon. Even if we are not conscientiously aware of this, lighting produced by artificial

sources immensely increases our perceptual effort, tiring our bodies and our minds to the point of

exhaustion. The more the ambient optic array is structured by lighting produced by artificial sources

and the more time we spend in such environment, the more prone we will become to developing these

disorders, whose appearance I directly link to the degree of perceptual effort being made multiplying

by the amount of time of exposure.

Up until the advent of the modern medical sciences and the pharmaceutical lobby in the late

XIX century and early XX century, how many illnesses were being treated by sun bathing therapy,

relocation to better climates and overall change in diet and life style? In fact, the mind controls the

body for better and for worse. Psychological and emotional disorders can have rather complicated

consequences to the body, and also the body will “cure” itself when in presence of a sane mind.

The lighting industry cunningly exploits these worries by marketing lighting products41 that do

40 Obviously I'm not advocating that lighting was the sole responsible for these consequences, but given the changes to the life style, this paradigm shift in lighting, which further fuelled the changes to the way of life, was in itself, upon combining all the direct and indirect consequences that it entailed, an important factor in determining the well being of the population affected by this paradigm shift, especially in the West.

41 I wonder if these lighting companies do in all honesty believe in the results they advertise for their products...


not address the root of the problem and, if anything, will most likely contribute for an aggravation of

the overall well being condition, simply because daylight and a healthier life style have no artificial

substitutes.

The answer to the well being question depending on lighting seems simple, for main source of

lighting one should always use daylight instead of artificial sources, and especially those which

qualities steer immensely away from those of daylight, namely discharge and electronically produced

lighting. Since these conditions are seldom satisfied, the lighting design should take as a starting point

the qualities of daylight, and be effective in its “reproduction” of those qualities. It should be noted that

when possible, the lighting designer should maximize the actual daylight inside the closed space before

even considering the electric lighting system42. Basically what I propose here is the implementation of

the PSALI43 method whenever and wherever possible.

On the Recursive PCiL and Its Effects

By Recursive PCiL effects I mean the effects that are created or enhanced by the presence of

other PCiL effects. This is a fairly simple notion but one which has a considerable impact. We can try

to understand the PCiL in a compartmented way, but we must realise that as a phenomenological

theory, they all work together at the same time, depending and fomenting each others. They work like

42 Something that will address other issues currently in vogue in the lighting field, namely the sustainability issue.43 “The method known as Permanent Supplementary Artificial Lighting of the Interior is based on three principles:

the utilisation of daylight as far as practicable; the use of electric lighting to supplement the daylight in the interior parts of the room; the installation of the electric lighting in such a way that the daylight character of the room is retained.” http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~bsapplec/design.htm


a set of three gears revolving for a common axle and they cannot be appreciated hermetically from one

another. Seeing is a complete experience with direct repercussions on mind and body, and it should

always be regarded in this way, or the lighting designer takes the chance of missing the point of his/her

task.

The Visual Comfort PCiL effect enhances the experience and/or occurrence of the Visual

Aesthetic PCiL effect and of the Mood PCiL effects. It is at this level that are created the external

conditions for how we experience a possible Aesthetic PCiL effect and possible Mood PCiL effects.

The Visual Aesthetic PCiL effect influences and normally implies the occurrence of Mood

PCiL effects. The Aesthetic effect induces Mood PCiL effects and it is a recurrently used strategy to

quickly create emotional states and certain behaviours.

The Mood Behavioural PCiL effect directly conditions and determines the Visual PCiL effects.

This PCiL effect is largely responsible for the optic flow field, it tells us where to look at each moment,

when and how to look, to where and when to move, and just as a consequence of looking and moving

or acting in relation to the environment, a new ambient optic array will inform us at each given

moment.

The Mood Emotional PCiL effect changes the Visual PCiL effects. It is in the emotional

connection to what we see that we will redefine the value and significance of what we see. This effect

will be directly and strongly linked to the findings of our conscious perceptual, namely the Visual

Aesthetic PCiL, transmuting perceptions to accommodate to its effects.

The Well Being PCiL effects are a consequence of all the other PCiL effects. Obviously, when


the beneficiary is provided with better Visual Comfort and better Visual Aesthetic circumstances, with

determinate Mood Behavioural and Mood Emotional conditions, the effects of these PCiL will

indirectly manifest for the better of the Well Being sensation.

Logically, if the other PCiL effects manifest in a worse than desired way, they will most

definitely contribute for a sensation of worse mental and physical situation. Depending on the violence

of these conditions, the effects will manifest mildly or aggressively, from light interference to

overwhelming conditioning.

Mentally, as in the cases of boredom or depression, and alertness or excessive agitation,

respectively. Physically, as in the cases of tiring or exhausting situations, the lit environment may

become propitious for the occurrence of migraines and cardiovascular and respiratory alterations, in a

cumulative feedback effect with the mental state.

Generally, the negative effects of a poorly lit environment qualify as being agents promoting

fatigue, both mental and physical, and stress. Again, if the Visual and Mood PCiL effects cannot be

verified as having a positive impact, they ought to be devised as having a next to neutral influence in

the Well Being PCiL.

Chapter Eleven Page 115

Chapter Eleven

▪ On Method

So far, the quest of this paper has been to approach us to light in a meaningful way. In doing

so, several discussions arose on the nature of light and on the nature of perception, and on how both

natures relate to each other. There has been a great preoccupation in finding a competent definition

for “ambient lighting”, one that stands above all the particular uses of lighting, and because of this, one

that becomes the ideal substrate for the proposal on the Phenomenological Capabilities in Light. These

ideas put together should constitute a new way of facing the lighting design practice, but even if we do

have this knowledge perfectly internalized what are we to do with it and how do we use it?

Lighting to the Human Scale

There has been for quite some time now, the trend of thought that views lighting as a part of a

whole architectural or urbanistic experience, namely in the academic field of lighting design, what has

become celebrated has a holistic approach; which is, to a great extent, a very decent effort in trying to

“humanize” lighting, but we must agree that we only arrive at this point of having to “humanize”

lighting if what was being done before, had been profoundly misguided attempts to designate

archetypal lighting systems, oriented by second interests, or simply specified with lack of knowledge or

interest.

On Method Page 116

A cultural point has come in which we are aware that this cannot be kept as it has been for so

many years, hence, the seek and promotion of a new attitude and posture by professionals in the field,

and because it is a very recent push forward, I still witness a very post-modernist attitude in lighting

design professionals, mostly by judging the lighting designs alone.

It is granted that this kind of approach, the holistic one, can be seen reflected by the many

concerns of devising a more integrated lighting system in the building architecture and in coping with

the functions of the building and the sort of use that people require from the very same lighting

system; but are these new lighting design goals being truly achieved, or are they, on the other hand,

being overshadowed by a design exercise consisting of light?

This brings me to the point that only design methods can be taught and learnt, these holistic

concerns never seem to be easily contained in methods of any kind, for a true holistic design approach

only happens on a casuistic note. The issue here seems to have grounding in the very limitations of

designing methods which are meant for “product” development, and here I employ the term “product”

in a very broad fashion, to the point of considering lighting designs as products even when they

haven't left the drawing table or drawing software.

On another hypothesis, the task of designing with light seems to have more in common with a

R&D attitude than actual product designing, and as we know, in such a view, there is no space for

relying, almost dogmatically, on methods of any kind. Conversely, trying to enforce the systematic use

of a method as if it were a multi-purpose tool is, in lighting design, the route to under achievement.

Let's consider the many projects we can take part in that are so different in their very own


essence from each others, and how can we even consider applying the same old wore out method to all

of them? How can we be confident in the results when we are unsure about the tools that this method

has provided us with? We can't, for there is no tool besides our very own sensibility that is able to deal

with all these different cases and still return an adequate, reliable and uncompromising answer.

Obviously this is what I'm going for. A lighting designer without sensibility is about as needed as a

lumberjack without muscles. In fact I believe that sensibility should be our main muscle, much bigger

and much more powerful than the technical muscle. Whereas technique is nothing but solution,

sensibility lays out what is the problem in the first place. A lighting designer that has only technique

may very well have the solutions, but to address which problems? Furthermore, concerning technique,

there is no shortage of deeply qualified and competent professionals. Despite this, please realise that

I'm not condemning the technical portion of the process; these technical abilities are needed and any

lighting designer should be at least a bit versed in the matter, what I'm saying is that lighting designers

don't need to be lighting engineers, nor should they be led to believe they need to; instead they should

be pointed the way of developing their sensibilities towards what they create.

I'd like to redirect you to the very first chapter in this paper, The Architecture as Living Space,

to bring to your attention the actual problem that we face in lighting design. As proposed by Appia in

the early XX century, the purpose of architecture is to build environments to the human scale, so that

it becomes a human environment, made by us and especially for us. Lighting needs to suffer the same

paradigm shift in a world that throws these concerns to the bottom of the list.

I believe that in seeking a lighting devised to a human scale all problems that we are trying to

On Method Page 118

solve with new techniques and new products, will be solved just at the attitude level. Everything from

“better” lighting to ecological concerns and even aesthetic values will be addressed in a practice of

lighting to the human scale.

Vectorial Tools for a Personal Method

I hope it has become clear by now that the presentation of this long discussion along with the

inclusion of some very special views regarding light wasn't made just for the sake of argument. The

layout of the discussion was instrumental, strategic and tuned to reach this point where hopefully

everything should make immediate sense.

It never was an intention of mine to present here a method to replace any method currently

being used by anyone. It is my understanding that not all lighting designers use the same method in

their practices, but what there's no need for is the amount of authors publishing their methods,

supposedly as the best ones. To me, the solution for lighting to the human scale will never reside in

such approaches, but in one that I called vectorial tools for the development of a personal method.

These vectorial tools have already been introduced along the course of this paper and now the

only task there is left to do is to give them an order and shape.

All lighting design processes should rely from beginning till end on a triangulation of these

vectors:

– Ambient Light, lighting from the environmental, ambient optic array, optic flow field and

from the affordance perspectives as proposed by Gibson;


– The PCiL, lighting from the phenomenological perspective as coined by myself, upon

extrapolation of the Phenomenology of Perception, by Merleau-Ponty;

– The Three I's of Steiner, intuition, imagination and inspiration, from the perspective of

effectivity, for the lighting designer and the beneficiary as systematized and applied in the

field of lighting design.

These three vector tools concurrently contribute for the creation of a lighting design to the

human scale since they address directly the questions formulated before.

– Via the Ambient Light vector tool we rely on the acceptance that light structures the

perceived environment and that this perceived environment only “takes the shape and

dimension” of the scale of our human perception. In this sense ambient lighting must

encompass a concern for the multiple perceptual layers and the optic flow field in itself, via

the perceptual scaling ability. By understanding ambient lighting as the first unconscious

perceptual step and, at the same time, the last conscious perceptual step we are

determining that ambient light should be the starting point and the final aim of any

lighting design.

– Via the PCiL vector tool we are able to understand, at the human level, the consequences

of light in our nested interaction in and with a nesting environment. It is only by applying

On Method Page 120

this tool that we recognise and expect for lighting to have determinate consequences at the

beneficiary level. This tool links directly with the possession of technical abilities because it

deals with light as materia prima and, thus, the lighting designer approaches the task of

the painter or that of the musician, who create images and sounds from the depths of their

sensibilities, using an artistic support and by controlling a technique that is used to

materialize this creation. Creation that is expected to move, influence, affect its

beneficiaries in a certain way; this is only possible because the artist realises the

phenomenological value of his creation. Here I'm effectively comparing the lighting

designer to an artist and the lighting design to an artistic creation in which light is used as

materia prima.

– Via the Three I's vector tool the lighting designer realises that it is by applying his/her

effectivities associated with his/her condition of spiritual being that the relationship with

light and with the environment will take place. This governs not only the “artistry” of

lighting design creation but also the living and experiencing of light in the environment as

a beneficiary. In other words, if ambient light is both the starting point and finish line of a

lighting design (the where/when), if the PCiL relate us to, and determine the actual things

that we see (the what), this last vector is responsible for the how, it is the anchor of our

human scale, according to which nothing will be escaping that human dimension that I've

been mentioning since the beginning. The Three I's are the solution for more sensible


practices in lighting design and the instigators of the awareness of the importance of light

in our lives. They swell our organ of sensibility and are responsible for “richer” lighting

designs from the standing point of the designer and of the beneficiary.

Since none of these tools escape in the slightest way the human dimension, I'm compelled to

believe that they will in fact be responsible for better lighting designs and designers, along the premise

of lighting to the human scale. As you realise, they do not constitute a method per se, so their use is

independent and can coexist with any method devised by the lighting designer. Their role could be,

however, that of the supporting ground for any method, thus becoming the essence of all methods,

especially the ones created individually by each lighting designer.

Final Thoughts on Lighting Methods and Practices

It is my intention that all the knowledge produced here will try to encourage you to, once it has

been fully assimilated, completely dismiss a rational understanding of the task of lighting design. It is

my belief that anyone can work as a lighting designer resorting to the Three I's vector tool, intuitively,

imaginatively and inspirationally; provided, of course, there has been some training of these abilities. If

one relies on Steiner's teachings, constant resort to manuals and the need for methodical approaches

which propose only accepted professional techniques, supported by the renewing market trends,

political guidelines and scientific paradigms will eventually subside.

The world of lighting can indeed be very shallow and very distant from the pitiful self-

On Method Page 122

indulging belief that lighting has a deep impact in our daily life events, and to a deeper extent in our

conception of existence. This is clearly not so, or certain practices present in the lighting field would be

completely forbidden, for instance: the massive strength of the lighting industry and the repercussion

certain biased studies have on public opinion and, for that matter, in the scientific community's

opinion.

It worries me how a certain lighting technology is massively introduced into the market

claiming better quality and attributes, only to be demised a few years later and replaced by

subsequently developed technology44; how the belief that higher lighting levels are generally a better

solution, demanding more individual lamps of a more electrically efficient technology; how the

lighting designer profession requires almost exclusively technical skills as a standard product design

position does. It bothers me how it is progressively reaching a computer aided task exclusively,

whether focused in calculation or in simulation. It bothers me its pretentious achievements and the

lack of real but unpretentious ones.

Sometimes in our journey through life, and especially in our western societies, more often than

not we are confronted with the destruction of our irreverence and ideals when facing the proposition

of becoming part of a professional field or market of any kind; some might say it's only a sign of the

times. It may very well be that as a symptom of this age in which this thought is produced, where

everything is methodically made instrumental, “light” became such a “thing”, something devised to see

more, to see better and to see prettier.

44 From this we should understand that “better technology” certainly does not mean “better lighting” in any way. “Better lighting” depends on better lighting designers and on a better use of lighting resources.


It is in this context of light as an instrument that it became possible to buy from a shelf, on any

lighting shop or any general purpose shop, “ambient light” as a product. As a result of this that occurs

in our cultural context, more and more lighting professionals are thinking about their competences in

a purely specialized instrumentalist way, one that strives far away from the artistic competences

promoted here.

Although, this is not a justification for us to stand by and accommodate, on the contrary, if

one is honest and coherent, one will attest that the field of lighting is at this point no more special than

any other field of work, and like so the urge to do something about this will emerge.

Light itself is mystical, magical and divine to a great extent, but especially, as it became clear

throughout this paper, profoundly human. Failure to understand this will lead to the practice of just

another business activity, limited by trivialities, redundancies, fears, best deals and technological

entertainments, which do not stand a single step above their petty mundanity.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

Christopher Columbus

Bibliography and Recommended Readings Page 125

Bibliography and Recommended Readings

Works that have, mostly in a positive way, contributed for the outcome of this paper; among

the directly referenced, some recommended readings as well.

Albers, J.: “Interaction of Colour”; Yale University Press, Yale, 2006.

Appia, A.: “L' Oeuvre d' Art Vivant”; BiblioBazaar, Charleston, 2009.

Bastos R., A.: “Luz-Cor Para Uma Obra de Arte Pós-Humana – Um Ensaio”; Departamento de Teatro do IPP-

ESMAE, Porto, 2008.

Boyce, P.: “Human Factors in Lighting”; Taylor & Francis, London, 2003.

Camargo, R.: “Função Estética da Luz”; TCM-Comunicação, São Paulo, 2000.

Da Silva, A.: “Textos e Ensaios Filosóficos II”; Âncora Editora, Lisbon, 1999.

Gage, J.: “Colour and Culture, Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction”; Thames & Hudson, New

York, 1995.

Gage, J.: “Colour and Meaning; Art, Science and Symbolism”; Thames & Hudson, New York, 1999.

Ganslandt, R.: Hofmann, H; “Handbook of Lighting Design”; ERCO Leuchten GmbH, Lündenscheid, 1992.

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