Impermanence
We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible.-Thich Nhat Hanh
I’ve been thinking quite a
bit lately about change. Specifically, the human species’ general resistance to change, and how societies and technologies can
advance even though we all generally hate the idea of change. I’ve lately become a fan of the idea of impermanence – that
all things change, even the most permanent and eternal-looking things will eventually evolve in some way. Ideas, mountains, weather, language, borders, policies, feelings, everything changes. This is a really disconcerting idea for lots of people. Take the
Express console, for example.
We here at
ETC have heard a lot lately about the
Express console. About how terrible it is that it’s going away. About how the industry simply cannot get along without it. Believe me when I say that we understand the strong feelings about the
Express console. We’ve used them ourselves on shows. We love them, too. There is no doubt that it has become the standard small
conventional theatre show
console here in the US. But at the same time, it is showing its age - from the floppy disk to the
track pad. The software itself, designed to control mainly dimmers, cannot really support the equipment available today in a manner that promotes advancement in the lighting art. Even small venues are using moving lights, or will be using them in the future. Those venues without movers are using accessories now that turn their
conventional fixtures into composite fixtures – scrollers,
gobo rotators, mirror heads,
dichroic color changers – these all turn those conventionals into multi-parameter fixtures, just like moving lights. We’ve become used to the idea of controlling these devices as just another
intensity channel. Because we’ve always done it that way the idea of combining these things into a composite
channel seems complicated, different and strange, regardless of the benefits that the composite
channel may bring.
Let’s
face it – lighting technology changes too. I remember my early days in this business where it was easy to sell a school on a new-fangled computerized lighting control
system because the thing we were replacing was an old
dimmer system with a slider
patch panel that sparked and got overheated and a single-scene (or maybe multi-scene)
preset controller. Replacing dangerous electrical equipment in a school was an easy sell – and because the new
system was replacing something
dangerous, the “cost of change” was lower - “We
have to update the technology because a student could be
electrocuted…” Nowadays, the cost of change is perceived to be higher because an older computerized
system is being replaced with a newer one. There’s little perceived
danger, so we resist the different. But what is the danger, really? It’s that students of lighting are being taught via workarounds in many cases, not what the
current lighting vocabulary is. Yes, it may be perceived as simpler. It may be perceived as “all we need”. But is it really what’s best for the student?
Let’s look at some different technologies for comparison. When
Express started shipping in 1995 Windows 95 was the state-of-the-art
operating system running on a Pentium
processor. At the
release of the last
Express stand-alone software version, Windows 2000 Professional was in vogue and running on a Pentium 4. For the
Mac users among us, the corresponding
Mac versions were
System 7 and OS 9. I had a mobile telephone in 1995 – it was HUGE and it did one thing – it was a phone. It was also ridiculously expensive and had a plan with about 12 minutes of usage on it (which matched the battery life, by the way). By 2001 I had a smaller phone that did a
bit more, but not much. Compare that with the smart phones and PDAs that many of us use to manage our lives now. Technology changes. Our expectations of speed and compatibility change.
What sparks our need for purchasing new technology? Usually it’s when we run headlong into a new idea and find that our
current technology is not capable of dealing with it. For example, I resisted replacing a perfectly good
CRT television with one of those expensive HDTVs for as long as I could. I didn’t need that new TV. I could live without it - until the Discovery
Channel started promoting their Planet Earth series some time ago. I really wnted to see that series. I really wanted to see it in HD. I replaced my TV with a day to spare. I wouldn’t go back. I recently replaced that same TV in another room with an
LCD flat-screen TV because of the upcoming
switch the country is making to totally digital TV broadcasting. It seemed the thing to do at the time (and it has freed up a lot of space in that room – you never think of how BIG those TVs are until you see them next to a flat-screen, or have to carry them down a flight of stairs…) Anybody who has tried to control movers on an
Express knows what I’m talking about. As soon as a moving light appears in the
theatre the cost of changing that
Express for something else drops like a stone. If you are one of those people, please take a look at the
Ion or Congo jr consoles – they are made for you. But what about those who say they will
never use a moving light? What are those people to do? What product does
ETC have for them?
So, we come back to
Express. Yes, it does most of what you need it to do. Yes, you know it well and love it. Yes, there are thousands of them out there. Yes, all the other theatres in your city have them (though, to be fair, at some
point in history, some school had to be the first to replace their old
preset console with a computerized
desk.) No, we are
not abandoning you. We hear you. We will bring you something in the near future that we believe you will like and will bring you into this new century of lighting control in comfort and with all the modern conveniences.
No, it will not be Express 2. What it will be is a
console that gives you the simplicity, approachability and the features you have asked for with a few more that we believe will make your lighting-lives easier. In
return, though, it will ask of you to learn some new concepts, adjust the syntax structure just a
bit, and get used to some new displays. To help you through this, we will provide you with
clear documentation of these new concepts and the features you use most, and tutorial movies to help you train yourselves and your students, and we will continue to provide the support that we have always provided through our Technical Services department and through online resources like our Community forums. We promise. Stay tuned…
Published 01-15-2009 1:21 PM by
sclausen
