Speaker 1: 0:37

you're tuned in to our latest what's on the platform episode, a regular roundup where we spotlight community happenings, trending topics and what's ahead at the virtual lighting design community. First up, a huge welcome to all our new members. We've seen an influx recently and we're thrilled to have you join the community. If you're listening and haven't yet explored the platform, here's a quick rundown of what's happening and what you can get involved with. Let's look ahead to events coming up later this month.

Speaker 1: 1:07

On the 24th of July, signify is hosting the webinar Preserving Darkness, presented by Sarvdeep Basur. This webinar dives into the intersection of design and sustainability, the role of responsible lighting and the broader impact of your work on the environment. On the 25th of July, bha School of Lighting are hosting the webinar titled the Growing Role of Controls. Hank Rotman will be discussing how controls are reshaping roles and responsibilities in lighting design. Jump onto the platform at membersvldcommunity and go to events to learn more or RSVP Now for some community highlights. The spotlight on projects section in our community hub has been getting a workout. We've had some great membership work showcasing a range of innovative, inspiring projects. The show and tell area has seen several dynamic webinars, including a recent talk by David Gilbey on Lighting for Tomorrow, hosted by BHA.

Speaker 2: 2:08

One of the things I love about biophilia is how the psychological affects the physiological. So you're in a hospital ward where you get daylight and you look over greenery and you just you're in a hospital ward where you get daylight and you look over greenery and you just feel well in yourself psychologically, you feel better. Well, it's researched that they dispense less pain medication, that people actually get well quicker, so feeling better helps you get well. I love that. Ai Guys. In my opinion, it's a tool. It's a very useful tool and it's one. It's a brainstorming tool. It's get some ideas tool.

Speaker 2: 2:53

But I'm going to talk about the pros and cons of AI. I mean, you can do anything with it. It's about where you know how we control light, where we put light no light above the vertical and I mean it's quite funny. If you look at Mosterdam, which is the responsible light regulation in Saudi Arabia, they say don't use up lights, no up light whatsoever. But as a lighting designer, I know that I can use up light and control up light. So for me it's more about responsible design than you know, accepting that we have to work within the norms, standards and regulations around the world.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Don't miss your chance to take part in the design competition for the ornamental and artistic lighting of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, supported by Light Collective. This is your opportunity to engage in a truly international challenge. Submissions are open until the 19th of August. Find all the details on the platform. This week we're excited to highlight a fascinating long-form conversations recently posted by Light Talk, featuring Martin Clausen in discussion with Juan Ferrari on AI and the future of lighting design. It's over an hour of insightful, forward-thinking commentary. We'll share a few standout moments. Right now.

Speaker 3: 4:18

There is a notion and it's a really interesting bit of a conversation which is a notion that everybody that is using AI is cheating. We need to move away from that. Everybody that is using AI is using a tool that is powering and amplifying what they're doing. They're not cheating.

Speaker 4: 4:37

Yeah, it has been quite a while since we last spoke, that's for sure. But I'm having you here because I want to talk about ai and the future of lighting design. But before we dive into that, uh, give me a little bit of your background. A lot of people know you, but there's also probably some of our audience that don't know you so good. If you gave us a bit of your background in terms of where were you born, what did you study, how did you get into the position you are today, it's a very convoluted journey, as most of the lighting designers in the industry.

Speaker 3: 5:11

I'm Argentinian. I was born in Buenos Aires many, many, many years ago. I'm not going to tell you when was that, but many years ago. You need to trust me there. I'm not going to tell you when was that, but many years ago, you need to trust me there. I trained as an actor and then I started directing theatre and then I actually started performing and then I started getting involved in all of the technical aspects of theatre, and technical aspects that I liked the most was lighting, and I became kind of an accomplished theatre lighting designer to the point that I started doing things that were over and above what I thought I knew.

Speaker 3: 5:52

So I came here to the UK to study theatre lighting design. I studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. I did my course there, I did a BA in light and in theatre lighting and from there on, while I was at university, I started shifting my attention to architectural lighting. I find it fascinating that the narrative that we had in theatre and that I have actually lived as an actor and as a director and as a lighting designer in theatre didn't naturally exist in architectural lighting. So I actually started paying attention to that and starting exploring that, to the point that I ended up working in architectural lighting, working in architectural lighting.

Speaker 3: 6:40

So I got my first job as an architectural lighting designer in a company called Equation. That has now changed hands. It's the actual equation, it's the GIA equation, but at that point Mark Hensman was actually the director at Equation. So I started working there. I met some of my colleagues, my current colleagues you had Corley there, there in particular, jonathan rush and um and uh. John then moved to to horley and I moved shortly after and since then we have actually been developing the lighting team for horley, first of the direction of dominic merrick and now under our own direction.

Speaker 3: 7:16

So between me, jon and Ruth Kelly was kit. We are actually running the lighting design department for Foley, which is quite up and again a very well recognized and well established lighting design department in its own right within a massive, really big engineering company that is also part of a bigger, even bigger multinational company called tetra tech. So that's my role at the moment. I direct a team of 25 people in lighting design. Um, they're lovely. They're really, in my view, the most creative people that I have actually met with a enormous understanding of the technical uh knowledge that you need to have in order to deliver the best quality lighting design possible. So, yeah, that's that's my role currently and I love talking, so I do a lot of talks and I no, no, no, you're yes, that's where I end up, so I'm quite curious also, martin.

Speaker 3: 8:15

So that's why I ended up um working and exploring AI, which is another big story, another long story in its own right. We'll get to that.

Speaker 4: 8:26

We'll get to that, I've got a cheeky question. The fact that you have been an actor been of help in your profession when meeting clients?

Speaker 3: 8:40

I think that I actually think that I it helps communicating anything that you do to understand your body, to understand the way that you express yourself, to understand the emotions that you feel while expressing and any sort of register that you get over your own tools, of your own physical, emotional tools. It's quite helpful in any environment. So, yes, it helped me. It. It, to be honest, um, one of the most important things for me is to to be able to communicate properly, and lighting is a very difficult. It looks very easy, but it's very difficult to communicate in words. Uh and uh, and I think that my, my theater background have helped me enormously there, and then and then the. The notion that lighting is a tool that actually tells stories and that has a narrative it has, as all of that piece of work of mine is is based on my experience in theater, really, so it's a yes.

Speaker 4: 9:41

I've helped me a lot yes yeah, I think it's a great combination because in theater lighting your focus is technically on the actors when you light, but in architectural lighting it's more about lighting the architecture.

Speaker 3: 9:56

So I think that combined knowledge I think is is great uh, but also in architecture it's it's not only lighting the architecture, it's lighting for people using it. So, although we don't, we don't necessarily experience, uh, our, our lives as a play or as a narrative to, we don't feel that our lives are a story. We are actually living through emotions in the same that we are living through emotions at play. So it's, it's quite important that lighting takes into account the feelings and the journeys that people have within the architectural spaces, and that's one of the most important things for me so let's jump into ai straight away.

Speaker 4: 10:38

At what point of time did you get caught by the AI bug?

Speaker 3: 10:44

I actually. That's why it's quite funny I do a talk about AI and I actually expose myself quite in a big manner in that particular talk because I'm a user of AI and user and abuser of AI. So I started playing with AI on a journey to Birmingham. Actually, we were in the car, and particularly with ChatGPT we were in a car a about, uh, lighting, and he'd answered it in a way that I couldn't. I couldn't answer it.

Speaker 3: 11:31

Um, even if I was given an hour or two to to respond to that particular question, I went like, wow, this is quite impressive because in a microsecond, all of a sudden, I get an answer that was quite solid and it was very much technically sound and I thought this is quite interesting. So the IALD was doing their Enlighten conference and calling for papers and I actually composed a paper completely with AI, about AI and lighting, but that without me knowing a lot about AI, and the paper got selected. So all of a sudden, I had to learn about AI in order to present about AI, which is an unfortunate, fortunate situation. You know, it was a little bit cheeky from me and that was quite a successful talk because, as I say, I exposed myself into a point in which I said look, I don't know anything about ai, I just put this into a, into a, into inai, and I prepared a presentation all through ais. And then this is my story.

Speaker 3: 12:33

Um, right, if you fast forward, this was three years ago now almost two and a half years ago. And and uh, if, um, if you fast forward to today, I am actually constantly training myself on these new tools and in ai that are available to us. I'm playing with all of them. I use them on a regular basis. I I encourage people. I think that my mission on this, on this particular front, is to encourage people to use it. Some people are quite scared. They have ethical concerns, they have moral concerns, they have all sorts of concerns, and the only way of actually making this tool a lesser problem is using it. So I'm encouraging people to use it.

Speaker 4: 13:21

I'm a bit like you because I just got late last year or something, I got in touch with it and then, I know, if you have seen, but I'm promoting an AI course for lighting designers, which I'm doing with an AI specialist which, like you, he's an architect, he's been in this for the last couple of years, he knows everything of AI, he dreams and and lives ai. But I I feel also a bit bit reluctant and a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities. And you talked about the tools two years ago. Well, you see what speed they evolve and develop, so what's possible today.

Speaker 4: 13:59

But for me, the reason to jump in is to be the reason to be. You know, I've got 45 years of experience in lighting design, so I can actually sort of being the challenger and the reasonable, the reasoning behind what ai throws at us and and look at it through the lighting design expertise that I have and say, well, is this correct? Yes, correct, yes. And, like you say, what comes back is sometimes amazing, like really the knowledge. So, yeah, I think it's important to have that balance and you can't better learn a thing than really diving into it and embracing it, because there's no way we can go around it, it's there. It's there for us. It will be like the mobile phone. It's something that's going to be there as a new revolution, and if you're not in it, you're not going to win it, that's for sure. So talk about tools.

Speaker 3: 14:54

Go ahead. Yeah, I think that is portant. I think that you need to be able to use it and to be in it. There is something generationally. It's a really interesting conversation, the generation conversation. It's like we did within our lifetimes we went from a pencil and a piece of paper yeah to a typewriter I would put myself in that category to a computer, yeah to the internet and to AI, and we did that. I'm going to disclose my age now. I'm 50. So within 50 years, I've done that. My journey took 50 years. If you think about it. Our kids nowadays learned all of that in a period of 10 years.

Speaker 3: 15:42

So imagine how much all of this tool-related relationship that we have with our profession any of our professions will evolve in the next 40 years. For them, what will come, we don't know, but it's going to be definitely at the pace that we are currently exploring it. So it's going to be magical, you know. So it's incredible the amount of change that is ahead of us. So what we need to build in ourselves is the possibility of being flexible and grab these tools that are given to us. And today today, we're in 2025.

Speaker 3: 16:22

The tool that we are using, or a lot of people are using is chat, gpt or deep seek, but tomorrow it will be another one, and the day after it would be another one, you know. So what you need to be able is to become permeable to all of these tools that are coming to use to you, to be able to use it, and the way of really using them is, um, is having a reason to use them. So I think that the second bit of an NEI conversation is what do we want to do with them? What do we want to do with AI? Because if we don't have an answer of what do we want to do with it, then we cannot use that tool.

Speaker 4: 16:59

Okay, so tell me, what are we going to do with AI? What?

Speaker 3: 17:03

are we going to do with AI? What are you doing? Maybe better, what are?

Speaker 2: 17:06

you doing maybe better.

Speaker 4: 17:07

What are you doing at the moment with ai, and what do you think we should probably be doing?

Speaker 3: 17:12

so let's, let's let's start a very basic uh point of what do we do with ai. The first thing that we do with ai is try to streamline our mundane tasks, you know, those things that we don't like doing, like writing emails. What do I use AI for? To write my emails. I turn not to write any more emails. I actually tend most of the time to dictate an email to an AI. The AI composes. I review that email sent.

Speaker 4: 17:42

I still need to correct. You still have to prompt, so that means you still need to write something. No, I do that verbally it flies.

Speaker 3: 17:48

I do not. I do it verbally, I do it on the microphone, so I actually dictate it to oh.

Speaker 3: 17:55

OK, all right, ok, I don't, I don't, I don't write it. I actually go write an email to Martin Klassen. I want to actually discuss this next interview that we're doing together. I want to know the subject that we're going to discuss. Send the amount and, and the ai does it for me, uh, formats it for me when, when you're working on your second language and english is my second language. This is a really, really time saving tool. Um, it does save me loads of time and and I absolutely adore the fact of doing that mundane task for me I use it quite a bit for research, so I build up project folders within my AI of choice and actually then say, well, look, this particular bot is going to act as a lighting agent or a lighting person, and then it has this amount of experience and it actually based all of his knowledge on this piece of information.

Speaker 1: 20:22

If you want the full experience, we highly recommend watching the full video on the LightTalk YouTube channel at LightTalk Space or the website at lighttalkspace. Of course, it's also available for viewing on the VLDC platform. What's next? Before we wrap up, a preview of our next episode, we're bringing back a favorite from season one in our Business of Lighting Design series. You'll hear Paul Nolte of Nolte Lighting in setting the stage. A must listen for anyone interested in the business side of lighting design. Here's a sneak peek of what's in store.

Speaker 5: 20:58

The business of lighting design is the business of requiring a whole new skill set from that of being just the lighting designer. And I'm not going to lie when I started my practice I certainly didn't have many of the skills that were required. For me it was a case of make it up as you go along and figure it out. So I'm hoping at least I can give some of you a head start today. And if you thought that there was a very diverse set of skills required to be a lighting designer, I can tell you that diverse set of skills is even larger when it comes to running your own practice. Set of skills is even larger when it comes to running your own practice. So let's just have a think about that, because once you set out on your own, you're no longer just a lighting designer. You are deep breath here a salesperson, you're a bookkeeper, a manager, a business strategist. You're possibly a boss. If you employ people, you'll need to have a really good understanding of accountancy, of legalities, of contract law. You may need to understand employment law and HR law. You're definitely going to need to understand conflict resolution, because you can no longer pass those difficult contractors and clients off to your boss, you've got to deal with them yourself.

Speaker 5: 22:13

Now, I can't profess to be the best at everything in my business. I am far from the best accountancy person, far from the most creative of people, but I am pretty good at all of the skills that are required. My philosophy has always been to be perfectly confident at surrounding myself with people that are better than me. In fact, my first ever business plan finished with a very simple closing line I want to be the worst person at everything in my practice, and I can tell you that, even if I didn't know it, though, I certainly understood what I didn't know. I certainly understood that I needed to know certain things to be able to manage a business, and in many respects, that meant that I needed to become a bit of a Swiss army knife of skills a multitude of skills, a multitude of skills that are required to run a practice.

Speaker 5: 23:07

Perhaps you want to save the world, perhaps you want to be more environmentally friendly. Whatever your purpose is, I think it is really important to understand it and define it, because it's going to help you create your own USPs and it will separate you from your competition. And if we start to understand our purpose, then we can start to build a brand around it, and that brand has to be passionate and it has to have a unique selling point, a USP. So, whether your purpose is to save the planet, to help the world, to bathe the world in more blue light, whatever your purpose is, it's going to define who you are and who your brand is, its ethics, its style, and it should be underpinned, ultimately, by your passion, because passion is absolutely everything. You have to be passionate about what you're doing. If you're not passionate about it, don't do it.