Candle Vibe

Candle Vibe at D23
Fabricated by Disorient LA
Light fixture designed by Vadim
Concept by The Eye

The single Candela ethos

The flame of a candle and a 1 Watt LED bulb produce a similar amount of light: ~1 candela or ~12.5 lumens.

D24

This year we're going to create our Candle Vibe with "real" candles. Instead of using a collection of wired 1w bulbs we are purchasing a generous amount of these and those to disperse throughout the CH24.

Sadly, all our D23 Candle Vibe efforts were lost to corrosion because we were forced to pack our lights under the rain at the end of D23. We opened the crates again for CCXii to find a soggy mess.

D23

Start with the Club House

This year, the Club House has a new design. This is an opportunity to shake things up a bit, reassess our lighting stance and possibly introduce a new visual direction: a nature-inspired neutral palette and candle atmosphere. One way to achieve this is to get many (100?) individual 1 Watt 2000-2600K LED bulbs, not in strings and not moving. Hiding the hot spot of the bulb from direct sight, possibly with diffusers, would be a plus. In other words, we need to come up with a creative solution to create lampshades. Something as simple as clamped rolled sheets of paper could work as a starting point. Pallet racks give us many opportunities to anchor those light sources. We can use the geometry of the pallet racks as places to tuck those lights. This could be the year we fabricate wrappers to conceal the vertical elements of pallet racks that we have been talking about for a while.

For the Candle Vibe to be in full effect, places that need more light should get additional 1W bulbs, not brighter bulbs. Just to be clear, that means that we'd take a break from Pornj lighting in CH23. Aside from the 1W bulbs, the only color inside CH23 would be provided by the D14 Sign which we would probably want to tune down so it doesn't overpower the gentle glow of the candle vibe.

The neutral fabrics that drape the structure would create a visual container for the Candle Vibe inside the Club House.

Expand to the Whole Camp

The Club House could be the starting point of this new lighting paradigm. Extending the Candle Vibe to the entire camp would create a very special, intimate and magical atmosphere throughout camp and would save a vast amount of energy and resources compared to incandescent spotlights. Every time we need a space lit, we would use 1w 2000-2600k LED bulbs. Camp would need to hold a substantial reserve of those bulbs and of the cords necessary to create those lights but they are relatively inexpensive and easy to store.

We could start by using this lighting scheme in common areas such as the corridors shown as yellow lines across the orange XO on this drawing.

This is something that needs everyone's participation and rigor to make it happen, but it would be a heart opening atmosphere if we did. Some space such a Kitchen would need more light during working hours but most areas in camp need just enough light to navigate.

This lighting scheme is very subtle. Candle Vibe can quickly be compromised if other types of lightings are used. When a large enough part of camp is under Candle Vibe other campers will want to be part of it but reaching this tipping point will be an uphill battle.

Deliberate light pieces such as ⁠D14_Sign, Leo Villareal's new piece, John Foster's pieces, the lasers and our various ⁠Signs would stand-out more on this unifying and soothing atmosphere. CoSign is not included in this list because, as experience at D22, its orange glow overpowers any light that stands in it's vicinity.

Some of those examples use actual candles but we can get very similar effect with 1W LED bulbs: