Week 3: Up With the Sun

Most days, I find myself up with the sun, driving my course to start my day while the sun finds its way up into our sky. While each day brings its own perfect sunrise, I find that I am often distracted or amused by my own thoughts to really notice my emotional and physical response besides the typical “oohs” and “ahs” of the colors that I see in the sky. I decided to wake up early to see the sun rise without man-made distractions, so I headed to the Huntington Pier and arrived around 6:30am. I took this picture to remember my experience, with the pier in the foreground,and the sun rising in the background. Naturally, the pier was silhouetted by the sun, and so my initial thought process was that any scene or setting where a sunrise or sunset exists should obtain some form of silhouette (in theatrical lighting). However, I also thought back to the first in-class project, and came to the realization that it is imperative in design to think less about capturing a picture and more about the emotions, the memories and the physical responses that emerge— a response to experience. I decided to spend more time thinking about the thoughts that arose as a result of experiencing this sunrise, and came up with words like ‘quiet’ ‘peaceful’ ‘pure’ ‘luminous’ ‘powerful’ ‘brilliant’, and thought of memories that I associate with sunrise, often involving loved ones, coming to terms with something, or feeling gratitude for my journey. I find that this is much more insightful, more full of depth and more communicative than choosing a source of light and creating a silhouetted foreground. This goes along with my first blog post, where experience and the association of colors and images with ideas, memories, and emotions is more honest to our experience as beings than a photo copy image that might seem sterile and dishonest in result (perhaps a repetitive blog post but a revelation nonetheless). I am going to challenge myself to think in terms of experience in my choreographic and lighting design processes, because I feel that these experiences must communicate most clearly to viewers, and allow for viewers to pull from the stage and respond according to their own experiences.