Lately these days, I’ve been doing a lot of thought deconstruction in lighting design. I’ve written before about allowing myself down time to rediscover imagination and wonder. This goes deeper into that realm. We hear the word de-construction and the mind goes to mass demolition or desserts that were haughty and made to look like your kids had assembled them, but it tasted pretty darn good. According to Merriam Webster, deconstruction means “a philosophical or critical method which asserts that meanings, metaphysical constructs, and hierarchical oppositions (as between key terms in a philosophical or literary work) are always rendered unstable by their dependence on ultimately arbitrary signifiers”. (phew) It does NOT mean demolition. It means careful breaking down and analyzing.
I spend a lot of my time working on my back deck. I’m an outside person who relishes fresh air, sunlight, and meandering daydreaming at times. I’m also a comic book fanatic having grown up in the “good old” age of affordable comics. I downloaded a few a while ago, and reading them now with my older psyche, I have realized that the ultimate de-constructor was/is Batman. Everything is questioned. He only trusts upon his own independent verification. His “toys” are instruments of form following function based on his bat computer analysis. I don’t know how many times another hero told him something had to be done a certain way and his response was, “Why?” I began to follow suit (admittedly, Batman had/has always been my favorite hero). I started thinking about everything I have been doing from a lighting design standpoint and then saying, why? When you do this, it is amazing when you’re honest with yourself, the sheepish almost embarrassing answers that come back.
-PETER
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