Italian Pavilion, Nicola Verlato.

Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich. This sculpture was fixed with refrigeration tubes at the top, so the white part is actually real ice.

Opening of hk pavilion

Opening of the US pavilion which showcased work by Bruce Nauman. The pavilion won Best in Show, the first time the US won since 1990.

A sculpture in the Russian Pavilion by Andrei Molodkin. It is a hollow version of the Victory statue. There were two of these and each had tubes underneath that pumped oil into one and the donated blood of a Chechnyan soldier into the other.

This was in front of the Austrailian pavilion. The last of the V8's! The Mad Max motif was used by the artist inside in video pieces as well.

The opening of the UAE pavilion.

2 rats fucking at the Distortion show.

The Danish pavilion had the sharpest criticism of the financial crisis. They did a mockup of a very nice house for sale, with nice furniture and art inside. Then outside a fake dead guy, the owner, lays in the pool.

Australian pavilion. A sculpture made from 174,993 VHS tapes which equals 66.1 years of viewing time, the average person's lifespan.

Korean pavilion featured artist Haegue Yang

Buckyball installation. Tomas Saraceno.

lamps

New maps by Daniel Medina

Japanese pavilion featured artist Miwa Yanagi

Gala at Peggy Guggenheim. Water taxi traffic.

UAE pavilion curator Tirdad Zolghadr and featured artist Lamya Gargash

A selection of new works and installations were created for a solo exhibition at Traffic in Dubai. A video invite was created where I drove around Dubai wearing the Rat Race helmet. The video would end with my arrival at Traffic and entering the space. On the opening night the same car used in the video was parked outside the entrance. You can view the invite here.

After the show opened a series of video vignettes were created to maintain interest. here.

The catalog for the show was designed by Salah Sadeq at Traffic.

The show had a closing event on April 16th with an artist talk. here.

Below are images from the opening night. Information on the works can be seen here.

This inflatable structure had projections all around it displaying various patterns and animations. For the performance a group of singers would walk on the structure, making it bulge and deflate.

One of the people running the performance was very nice and let us inside the inflatable dome.

This is the piece from Lab[AU] from Brussels. I had an exhibition at their space a couple years ago. It was really great to see them again and their new work. It was impressive.

This is a piece around a public fountain in the middle of Lyon. Fish flying around.

Generally, most of the light works were projections on building facades. These projections would be designed in a 3D program to give a sense of depth to the animations.

The food in Lyon is excellent. Seriously.

These next few works are from SUPERFLUX, the artistic lighting segment of the Festival of Light in Lyon.

Special thanks to:
Dhruv Dhawan, Film Real
Ahmed, Claire and Steve of Flickershow
Vivek and Vinay from Cliche Magazine

Video is currently in post-production editing.

Chanel Mobile Art exhibit

Pictures inside the exhibit.

Pictures from the VIP party.

Miraikan Museum of Science and Innovation

Club Womb

Graffiti near PS1 in Queens.

Helped set up the Habitat Hotel model at the MoMA for a new photoshoot.

Went to Indiannapolis for the public art installation with Vito Acconci. Tested out the sensors and LEDs onsite.

Good friend Todd Holoubek had a sound installation at a gallery.

Whitney Biennial

Olafur Eliason.

The view from the hotel we stayed at in Macerata, about 30 minutes from the iGuzzini headquarters.

The iGuzzini main office.

Interior lobby.

Lighting showroom.

Lighting Education center with many physical setups to show the different effects of luminous values and color temperatures.

Lots of very tasty food was eaten througout the week.

The classroom where they went over various projects that integrated their lighting.

After a few days in Recanati we went Rome to see various lighting projects there.

The Auditorium in Rome by architect Renzo Piano.

The last day was raining but it was nice to walk around Rome and see some shops and sights.

The PLDC in London was, as I believed, to be an open conference for all people working with light. The conference focused on lighting design theory and practice, and had some great speakers involved like Mark Majors of Spears & Majors among many other great architects or lighting designers, mostly based in Europe and the States. It was really refreshing to be at a conference where ideas were the focus and not manufacturers or products.

While the conference itself was great the 'awards' ceremony at the end of the conference was certainly a letdown. It became very clear that the awards ceremony was a way to congratulate PLDA members and those within their community with what they had achieved. It made absolutely no sense to include such high-profile people up for awards such as Tadao Ando or James Turrell, only to let them lose to someone who is directly associated with the PLDA. Did these people even submit their work into the contest?

That being said, I gave my own lecture that clearly garnered a strong response (many people telling me it was an engaging lecture, more than one said it was a highlight presentation, an invitation to present at Parsons in New York, etc..), nevertheless, they gave the award in my category to a student whose teachers and mentors happen to be the very organizers of the conference.

While there is no problem with recognizing the work of members of the PLDA, why bother calling it an open awards ceremony and just say its a ceremony to recognize work of people in your community? (ie. let's award people who pay our membership fees...)

The PLDC was a great conference for the content alone. The PLDA and the PLDC have a lot of potential to validify and create a stable platform for lighting designers everywhere, but only if they become an open community not an exclusive one. I hope that after patting themselves on the back during the awards ceremony at the 1st PLDC, the PLDA will open their arms to all those working with light (after they pay their membership fees, of course)...

Shibuya.

Dj'ing at my friend Dave Twomey's and his party YUK at Womb.

Quality food, presented well.

My friend Shane Berry doing a live Techno set at Module.

Visiting Hachiya at his Petworks company.

The lecture at Tama University went really well. Really nice to meet Penny and Dan from PDlab and also Professor Wada, who gave us a tour of Tama's great facilities. Being a student there must be fun!

Some random gallery was going to have an opening in a week where the grand champion of yo-yo was going to perform.