Compose for Glade

Glade is not only a physical object. The movement of light through it can also be composed.

Each of the twenty-eight stems contains an individually controlled light. Rather than switching the whole piece on and off, the lights can rise and fall independently — moving through the group in waves, gathering in clusters, flickering briefly, or appearing almost at random.

I developed the Glade Controller as a way of working with those movements in much the same way that I might work with shape, rhythm or material in the workshop.

Open the Glade Controller →

Composing with light

When I first began working on Glade, I was interested in the idea that the light could have its own movement.

A single stem illuminating is a very small event. But when twenty-eight of them begin to interact, quite different things happen. Light can travel from one side of the piece to the other, climb upwards, scatter, gather, pulse or slowly disappear.

The controller grew out of trying to shape those movements deliberately rather than simply producing lighting effects.

Over time it has developed into a kind of visual score.

Sequences can be arranged along a timeline, combined and layered, and their speed, brightness and character altered. Some movements are highly ordered; others introduce variation and chance.

The result can be very quiet or much more animated.

Music and rhythm

A lot of the development of the controller came through composing Glade alongside music.

A movement might follow a beat, respond to a phrase, or simply sit alongside the music at a different pace. Sometimes the connection is obvious; sometimes it is barely perceptible.

For me, the interesting point is not to make Glade behave like a music visualiser. It is to allow the light and the music to occupy the same piece of time.

The controller can also be used without music at all.

Make your own composition

I wanted other people to be able to experiment with Glade rather than the controller remaining something that only existed in my workshop.

You can open the controller in a web browser and begin making your own sequence.

There is no need to understand the electronics behind the lamp. You can start with a single movement, change its duration or intensity, and gradually build from there.

The controller has become quite sophisticated, but you don’t need to use everything. A very simple sequence can often be more interesting than a complicated one.

Open the Glade Controller →

A changing work

One of the things I like about Glade is that it never has to have a single finished state.

The timber, stems and shades remain the same, but the behaviour of the light can change completely from one composition to another.

In that sense the controller has become part of the work itself: not simply a way of operating the lamp, but a way of continuing to explore it.