To change someone’s mood, put in new lighting, says Texada Island’s resident lighting expert Joseph Scott. The colours lights emit affect people’s moods, with pink tones being the most tranquil and yellowy-green the most agitating.
Scott, 54, would know. He’s a certified lighting professional, president of TRIPPED ON LIGHT design inc., an accredited member of the International Association of Lighting Designers, a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America and a professional member of the Canada Green Building Council. He has worked on lighting projects around the world, covering anything from a women’s prison in the Fraser Valley to a luxury shopping area in Qatar.
“It’s important to visualize the end product and figure out how to light for the way a space is used,” says Scott. “It’s not always easy.” For a project like Rogers Stadium in Toronto, home to the Argonauts football and Blue Jays baseball teams as well as concert events, he had to design a control panel which allowed stadium staff to switch the lighting for each use of the building.
Born and raised in London, Ontario, with an aptitude for art, math and science, Scott studied electrical technology at Toronto’s Seneca College and urban studies at Toronto’s York University. He worked for a Toronto engineering firm which was starting a lighting design division in the 1980s, and was recruited by a Cincinnati-based lighting manufacturing company wanting to break into the Canadian market. As Canadian sales manager, he travelled across the country, promoting innovative, energy-efficient lighting to automotive and commercial industries.
One February, his flight from Vancouver returning to Toronto was cancelled due to an ice storm back east. Spending an extra week in the west coast city, Scott noticed that the grass was green and flowers were coming up. At that point he “was hooked” and knew he wanted to stay. Once home, he packed his bags and moved west, soon working for engineering firms as a lighting designer for projects such as Vancouver’s Rainforest Cafe, Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel, Birk’s Jewellers and station lighting for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco and University of BC’s Life Sciences Centre.
With the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, Scott hung up his own shingle as an independent consultant on lighting projects. As such, he has worked on public art installations in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa. He designed lighting for UBC’s Pharmaceutical Sciences Centre, which enabled electronic interaction between remote lecturers and students. He’s designed lighting for Vancouver International Airport’s domestic terminal, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City and a new Southwest Airlines concourse at Denver International Airport with “interpretive light media. Images and/or text along a wall follow the viewer as he walks along,” Scott said. “Lighting has morphed into somewhere between theatrics and your presence in the here and now.”
One of his favourite projects was a lighting system for a high-end retail, food and beverage area at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar. “Inside a children’s store, I designed a large ball with projectors inside it projecting images to the outside of the ball, which opened up to reveal a whole new world of images and sounds. It was really wild.”
In 2010, Scott designed lighting for a women’s correctional institute in the Fraser Valley, putting blue-white lights in common areas to keep prisoners awake and red lighting in the cells at night, which does not disrupt the natural sleep cycle while allowing guards to monitor any activity. He continues to upgrade his lighting skills, most recently studying theatrical lighting, including optical illusions.
While living in Vancouver, Scott met his partner Daniel Rucks, who had previously planted trees on Texada Island. After some “wonderful camping trips to the island with no predators,” they moved to Texada in 2003 and over time bought property near First Lake and are building a house and studio. In one room, Scott created a lighting effect he calls “candles in the sky,” with recessed lights in glass circles which glow from amber to white. As his way of giving back to the Texada community, Scott volunteers his expertise to provide stage lighting for live theatrical productions of Rock Island Players, and for events at Texada Arts, Culture and Tourism Society Centre in Van Anda. He also serves on the executive of Texada Action Now.
Scott says he has an average of a dozen projects on the go at any one time. “Without leaving home on Texada, I can work with an interior designer and architect in Vancouver, an electrical engineer in Colorado and a rendering artist in Hong Kong. There was a time when you couldn’t be more than 20 minutes from your work, but now I can live where I want to, not where I have to.”
