Discover the Art of Illumination

Published on 2013/01/13 | Source

Korea is a leader in next generation lighting technologies like LEDs. Companies like Seoul Semiconductor churn out solid state lighting that makes its way into TV backlights, advertising marquees, car headlights and, more and more commonly, our homes.

With Korea's contribution to lighting, there's no better place to put an entire museum dedicated to lights and lighting. About an hour north of Seoul by car in Yanju, sits the Feelux Lighting Museum. The facility aims to showcase the beauty and innovation of a technology that's often taken for granted.

If your lighting history is a bit rusty like mine, one section of the museum will take you through the evolution of lighting from electric bulbs to fiber optics. After that, absorb a fascinating exhibit about the medical use of light through light therapy. It explains how coming to rely mostly on artificial light as we've moved more of our activities indoors has distanced us from the changing brightness and color temperature of the sun, moon and stars, which used to dictate life.

This exhibit demonstrates a technology called Sun in Home (SIH) designed for apartments and hospitals. According to the Feelux Lighting Museum's website, SIH is a light therapy system, incorporating color therapy, used to treat conditions like sleep and seasonal disorders. It uses specific colors and wavelengths of light to affect a person's brain waves.

Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/VBoM5i

The museum also has temporary special exhibitions. A recent one called "Bang & Lee: Freinds in the Living Room", inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm, combined video with light displays. It explored how technologies such as smartphones and the internet influence society and our values. Just as the animals in Orwell's novel misspelled the word "f riend" as "freind" as they learned the human language, the exhibit represented how the media and new ways of communication could cause complication in our lives.

Here's a photo of a work from "Freinds in the Living Room", called "You Were My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine".

Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/ZiSiCI

About the author by Anna Sohn

I'm a New Jersey girl with a lifelong fascination with Korea, my motherland. In 2011, I moved to Seoul and I've enjoyed living in this wired and fast-paced city ever since. I'm excited to share the latest tech and design developments I encounter in Korea and hope you enjoy the AT&D blog as much I enjoy writing for it!

- Follow @advancedtechkr Twitter
- https://www.facebook.com/AdvancedTechKOR