IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Conceived As A Vehicle For Celebrating Human Potential In The Wake Of 9/11, ‘Rewarding Lives’ Has Now Touched Down In L.A. 

Lighting Design + Application, July 2004
by Maggie Koerth-Baker

Originally created to welcome American Express employees back to their downtown Manhattan headquarters after September 11, “Rewarding Lives,” an environmental exhibit featuring over 70 portraits of famous American Express cardholders (including Ella Fitzgerald, Tip O’Neill, Eric Heiden, Tiger Woods, Sammy Davis Jr. and Rob Reiner) by photographer Annie Liebovitz, has taken on a life of its own.  After a four-month run in late 2002 in the lobby of American Express’ World Financial Center headquarters, the entire exhibit was re-installed for the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival and has now begun a three-year world tour. The first stop was San Francisco. Next up, Los Angeles, where the exhibit will make its home until July 1 before going international. 

The exhibit, intended to celebrate human potential, was designed by Janine James of The Moderns, a multidisciplinary branding and marketing firm. The lighting design of the original installation was by Jerry Kugler, Wai Mun Chui and Jason Livingston, of Kugler Tillotson Associates, who received a 2003 Lumen Citation by the New York section of the IESNA and a 2003 International Illumination Design Award (an Edwin F. Guth Award).  For the installation at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center in September 2003 and the subsequent installation at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Livingston, now with Charles Cosler Theatre Design, was brought back to adapt the look of the original exhibit to the new venues, including adapting the fixtures, fixture locations and control, in preparation for the world tour.  

The exhibit is intended to be as green as possible, with most of the materials, such as the ply-wood floor system, donated to local groups when the exhibit closes in each city.  The exhibit covers more than 8000 sq ft and features perimeter freestanding walls of English ivy, which are separated from the main exhibit floor of blonde Aruca plywood by a wavy band of white river stones and additional English ivy on the floor.

Within this natural container are seven tubular aluminum framed structures, the tallest of which is 26 ft. The tensile structures are covered with a white sheer, scrim-like material. Each of these “pods” forms a semi-enclosed space to house the portraits, which are gathered together in themes such as The Visionary/The Pioneering and The Loving and Connected.  The pods act as canvases for the lighting, and are illuminated and sculpted with colored light that relates to their respective themes. 

Creating Colors

Colored light is created through the use of glass dichroic filters, manufactured by Rosco Laboratories, in theatrical lighting fixtures by Electronic Theatre Controls.  Approximately 160 Source 4 ellipsoidal reflector spotlights and Source 4 PAR fixtures are connected to nearly 100 dimmers, also by ETC, to provide the light and control that was required for the exhibit. The photographs are mounted on custom-designed stands, each outfitted with a 50-W MR16, which is dimmed separately from the theatrical fixtures to provide appropriate light levels.  Power to the MR 16s is run under the exhibit floor to each stand.  “The integral MR 16s make lighting the portraits the easy part.  It’s the rest of the environment that consumes the first three or four days on site because the focus is so precise and site specific. There is as much lighting equipment as an Off-Broadway show,” says Livingston, who began his lighting career in the theater. But with a design that requires so much careful focusing and such saturated colors, there’s no other way to do it.”

A combination of 575-W Source 4s with built-in shutters and 575-W Source 4 PARs with medium and wide flood lenses and barndoor accessories were used to shape the light for the individual pods and the undulating waves of the river stones.  Each pod is lit at a steep angle to graze the white scrim walls while controlling the light pattern on the floor and excessive colored light on the portraits.  An additional goal was to minimize both direct and reflected glare for visitors while they are viewing the photographs.  Source 4 PAR 575-W wide floods were used to light the ivy walls with broad washes of clear light. Additional beam control was achieved through the use of plastic frost and linear spread filters, also by Rosco Laboratories.  The circulation paths of the exhibit were left unlit so that at night the visitor is drawn to the illuminated pods and to the perimeter ivy and stones.

Have Exhibit Will Travel

The modular design of the exhibit allows it to change to some degree as it travels from city to city. Partly, there is an architectural adaptation that takes place—New York was an L-shaped corporate lobby, San Francisco was an old water-front hangar and LA, an outdoor pavilion. In each of these locations, the configuration of the pods, lighting, portraits, ivy, etc. is adapted while maintaining the exhibit’s original essence. The curation of the portraits for each location also varies to suit that city’s spirit.

Not surprisingly, design challenges arise that are unique to the particular site. “During the early planning for San Francisco, I had wanted to hang the lighting equipment on individual 10-ft long trusses so that I could position the fixtures exact-ly where I needed them,” says Livingston.  “But when that became time- and cost-prohibitive, we decided to hang them directly from the roof trusses of the Herbst Pavilion.  By shifting some of the pods a bit we were able to light the entire exhibit without the additional time and expense that the rented trusses imposed.  That savings made a huge difference to the overall project.” The dimmers and controller are on an elevated platform and are hidden from view.  Six-circuit multi-cable is used to provide power to all of the fixtures while keeping the number of individual cables visible to the visitors to a minimum. 

At its current location atop the third-floor of the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, Rewarding Lives has been reconfigured outdoors under an ethereal, custom-designed tent. As a result, those driving by the PDC can also enjoy the design.  For the lighting team, “the big challenge was the long narrow shape of the space in L.A.,” explains Livingston. “The other two installations were wider and more open, allowing for greater selection of lighting angles and fixture placement. The tent in L.A. was linear and the sides of the pods were very close to the ivy wall and the wall of the tent, which presented quite a challenge in lighting those areas of the pods. The Moderns were able to make some adjustments to accommodate the lighting.  Fortunately, the shape and material of the pods was very forgiving, so even those areas that weren’t lit as well as they had been in New York and San Francisco looked just fine.”

The other challenge, he says “was that we had no way of predicting how ‘live’ the tent would be. Would the lighting trusses sway with the wind?  Would we see the beams of light sway, too?  Would there be a lot of vibration transferred to the trusses?  Would all of this cause the lights to lose focus (especially in an installation lasting five-to-six months)?  Fortunately, there was not much sway transferred to the trusses.  The focus does require a little more maintenance than it would otherwise, but overall the structure is pretty rigid and has had minimal negative impact on the look of the lighting system.”

Natural And Artificial Light

The approach to the lighting reflects the broad-er goals of the exhibit. “The entire exhibit is about contemplation and transformation,” says Livingston. “Especially the lighting. The sites in New York and San Francisco have large expanses of windows. During the day direct and indirect light from the sun and sky flood the space with natural light. At that time the primary colors of the exhibit are the green ivy, the wood floor and the white fabric of the pods. As evening and night approach, the natural light fades and the artificial light takes over. The colored light transforms the pods and their environment while the distribution of light transforms the shape of the exhibit, leading the visitors along different paths and to different gathering areas than those chosen during the day. It creates a beautiful glowing environment in which to contemplate the art.”  

This transformation is achieved through light levels which have been carefully designed for each time of day.  Light levels for the portraits, walls, stones and individual pods were set and recorded on a computerized lighting controller for continuous playback during the run of the exhibit. The light levels were programmed on an Expression three controller and played back on an Express Lighting Playback Controller, both by Electronic Theatre Controls.  “We used the Astronomical Time Clock on the controller to trigger the lighting cues by the day of the week, and relative to sunrise and sunset,” says Livingston. “This guarantees that the changes in artificial light will always occur in response to the predictable changes in the natural light.” As for the unpredictable changes in the natural light, such as variably cloudy days, Livingston says, “Those natural variations in daylight caused by sun, clouds, fog, are just another form of the continuing transformation of light’s effect on the exhibit.”

Green Goals 

In keeping with the green goals of the design all of the lighting equipment was rented so that it could be reused after the exhibit.  Equipment and labor in New York was supplied by Big Apple Lights.  Equipment and labor in San Francisco was supplied by Impact Lighting.  Local rental houses will provide the lighting equipment for each additional stop of the tour.  Other materials are donated to local groups such as Habitat for Humanity for reuse in the community after the exhibit has closed.