Untitled (Olivia Smith)

Light is transformative, the presence or absence of light can completely change what we see and how we see it, literally and psychologically. Our relationship to light is primal, light and heat have been historically in-separable until only recent technological advances. We require light as fuel for the food we grow. Light is a need for human life akin to breathing and yet we almost never think about it unless it is absent.

Light as a medium presents a bit of a conundrum. On one hand everything you see is light. Everything. When light shines on a object- say a red shirt, and the shirt absorbs all portions of the visible spectrum except red, which the shirt reflects back to your eye- condensed, you don't see the red shirt you see light. On the other hand, with out an object to reflect it, light is worthless to a viewer. In theatre, outside of perhaps a laser light show, there is little point to lighting an empty room, an audience is there to see actors. As a lighting designer, my job is to structure how and what the audience sees.

This section of text speaks to me much in the same way that light does. The transformation of the earth from barren to fertile, A return of life and the discovery of it anew.