Coordinated by Maurizio Melis, journalist from Radio24, Moritz Waldemeyer, light designer, and Cesar Muntada, in charge of light design for Audi, brought the audience through the “bright” future scenarios of car lights that will be at the heart of a future that is no longer that far away.

90 percent of the information we receive comes from our eyes. The eyes of a car are its lights. The aesthetic appearance of a car’s lights characterizes its line, with more or less pronounced features. These “eyes” are manufactured using different technologies: Led, Oled, Matrix laser.

The lighting system for Audi is a trademark. This Ingolstadt-based car manufacturer, explained Cesar Muntada, is now integrating the work of designers and engineers in car design starting from their lights.

Extremely precise Matrix laser lights which are able to project a car’s measures on the road; organic light emitting diodes (Oled, a sort of paste spread on the car body and activated when under power) to light up only the necessary car parts such as sides or handles; swarm tail lights in which the material component “disappears” and lights become a continuous luminous beam which is perfectly integrated into the car, an organic and fluid movement.

Car lights that become true interactive installations, optical units through which light is able to interact with all that is around: the street, pedestrians, road signs.

This is the point of contact with light design. Waldemeyer explained how, for instance, Led light was a positive and surprising discovery for him, that enabled him to implement his works (between technology, art, fashion and design) which were previously inconceivable, because traditional light lacked in depth and weight (light is weightless by definition, but its weight is paradoxically very important).

Two projects by this German light designer with this use of light are now exhibited within the FuoriSalone in Milan by Paul&Shark, in the Brera district, where the magic of light shapes water and by FontanaArte, corso Monforte 13, with artistic and interactive installations.

So, in a word, light as technology and light as art. Distant worlds that come closer thanks to a desire to surprise, arouse emotions and go beyond. Expressions of human creativity that plays with light that often make us wonder: why? And we forget that light is the first thing we see when we come into the world and the last before we leave it. So there is no why.

 

Text by Danilo Signorello – photos by Efrem Raimondi

 

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From right, Cesar Muntada, Maurizio Melis, Moritz Waldemeyer ph. Efrem Raimondi
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Cesar Muntada ph. Efrem Raimondi
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Moritz Waldemeyer ph. Efrem Raimondi
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Audi R8
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An installation by Moritz Waldemeyer