Light Track: An Improvisational Monologue on the Stage of Life

Light Track: An Improvisational Monologue on the Stage of Life

 

When the dome of the theater suddenly went out, 1030 LED beads slowly woke up under the drive of servo motors. These smart lighting fixtures, known as "moving head lights," are currently adjusting their optical axis at a precise speed of 3.6 degrees per second, weaving the beam into a floating light network. Isn't life like this never-ending drama of light and shadow? We are all solo dancers wandering at the edge of the cone of light, searching for our own rhythm of life in the alternation of light and dark.

 

Modern optical research reveals that the movement trajectory of stage lighting is essentially a superposition of countless Brownian motions. Just like the uncertainty principle of the quantum world, our life trajectory is also filled with unpredictable variables. The chief lighting engineer of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra once recorded an interesting set of data: in the performance of the Symphony of Fate, the chasing light had to reposition the soloist's displacement on average every 8.7 seconds. This is like the unfathomable fate of life, when young lawyers put down their case files and walk into tea gardens, when Silicon Valley engineers turn around to become street painters, the spotlight of life forever pursues the most authentic vibrations of the soul.

 

The spectral analyzer shows that when multiple sets of intelligent lamp heads intersect at the dome of the theater, a wonderful color mixing phenomenon will occur. On the CIE chromaticity diagram, the green color at 550nm meets the magenta color at 630nm, and turns into a moonlight like silver white on the retina. This reminds people of the layered color wisdom of the "concave convex method" in Dunhuang murals, where the radiance of life from different eras shines together, forming a brilliant spectrum of civilization. Just as Leonardo da Vinci blended natural light with divine light in "Our Lady of the Rock," the strangers we encounter in coffee shops and the transoceanic emails we receive late at night inadvertently blend the unexpected radiance of life.

 

Lighting designers are well versed in the philosophy of "dark field". The experimental theater of the Bauhaus Academy in Germany has proven that in complete darkness, the human retina still retains a visual residual of 0.02 seconds. This is very similar to the modern revelation of the myth of Sisyphus - when the boulder of fate rolls down to the bottom of the valley, it is precisely the opportunity to accumulate strength. Japanese Noh drama master Seiya wrote in "The Legend of Hana no Hana" that the blank space in "ma" is more important than the dance itself. The seemingly stagnant career bottlenecks and sudden onset of illness pauses are actually necessary pauses in the symphony of life, allowing the soul to adjust its breathing rhythm.

 

Standing in front of the intelligent lighting console, watching the DMX512 signal flow through thousands of channels, suddenly realizing that every life is a unique frequency band in the cosmic spectrum. When the auroras of Norway meet the phosphorus fires of tropical rainforests in the stratosphere, and when Van Gogh's starry nights converse with Xu Wei's ink paintings in art museums, the miracle of life lies in this uncertain carnival. Perhaps we will eventually understand that true freedom is not about resisting the trajectory of light, but about finding the perfect balance between the precise calculation of servo motors and the improvisation of artists, like a smart lamp head, from one's own perspective.