Customer Reviews

The Speed of Light: Dialogues on Lighting Design and Technological Change

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While the subtitle promises "Dialogues on Lighting Desgin and Technological Change", you are instead presented with a bunch of old farts of the industry that remenince about "the old days of lighting". There are four sections. The first boringly details how the first computerized light consoles became popular. This might be an intresting to read if it were a page or so, but it IS 30 PAGES long with 5 different people talking about how various boards came about and why they failed. The next section is about the creation of vari-lites and "intelligent lighting". Once agian, nothing intresting or new. We are then presented with the birth of (gasp) DMX512! I learned so much about the history of dmx512 that I could ever care about. You learn such exciting things such as how at the USITT convention they bickered over which protocol to use. There is also another section, but by this time I had given up on the book and know that it just talks about lighting designers complaining about there students wanting to use intelligent lights in every show and how gobo's today are not what they used to be. To sum up, you could scroll through usenet discussions from rec.arts.theatre.stagecraft for 5 hours and get the same effect achieved from the speed of light. This book is one of the most boring books on theatrical lighting I have ever read...

The Speed of Light by Linda Essig is an important and interesting book covering the history of lighting design and techological changes in the industry. Lighting professionals and students will enjoy the dialogues from industry experts and others. If you are truely interested in the history of theatrical stage lighting buy this book!