ABSTRACT
Composers of music know the sounds that voices and instruments make. They know their physical characteristics, their ranges, how easy or difficult it is to sing or play particular notes; and they understand something of the effect that music can have on people. Similar things could be said of those who work in theatre or who paint, or who write poetry, or practice any other art. Part of the process of learning to be creative is to build up vocabularies of sounds or words or images, whatever the medium is. These become the language with which the artist communicates. The lighting designer’s language is brightness and colour in three-dimensional space; our medium is the physical building. But to share knowledge, to teach and to learn, we use a second language: the written and spoken word. This is the language we use to build up a theoretical framework that supports our designing. And like other artists we give some words a special meaning: examples are ‘brightness’, ‘lightness’, ‘colour’ and ‘space’. They are like ‘melody’, ‘harmony’ and ‘rhythm’ in music.
