Lecture 06: Lighting Simulation

Simulating light will allow us to bridge of parametric geometry and qualitative human experience. As we began by examining the various conditions of water in Exercise 1, one thing connected them- the properties of material. Waters viscosity, the environmental conditions and the scale of examination of water influenced the way we experienced water. This causal experience by the viewer in time is referred to as affect (closely related to phenomena)– the way in which the physical environment is experience. Thus the term material affect explains the way we experience something based on its unit property, its organization and the external environment.

This understanding of material affect is reliant on a need to measure. Earlier diagrams measured one relationship. In this way material affect measures the operative quality of a material of an phenomenon. Ned Kahn’s wind sculptures as demonstrated by the piece north of Lillis Business School does not become a frozen metaphoric representation of the patterns of wind but attempts to make visual or support the human experience of patterns of wind.

As we investigate one quality in our studio projects and variations of conditions of that quality, remembering our definition of a system = unit + organization + variation, we need to identify the variation in our geometric parametric systems to cause the variations of material affect we seek to design.

Rendering light is one tool to help visualize this phenomenon of material affect in our work. Other computational tools simulate the performance of affects listed earlier: