Former Dunedin man Hamish Steptoe has dipped his toes in to lighting design and never looked back, he tells Rebecca Fox.
Hamish Steptoe is in Sydney setting up his latest lighting design for Australasia's biggest lighting festival Vivid in Sydney.
His work, a collaboration with Angus Muir and his team, involves people lying underneath it.
As they lie underneath the shards and let the light wash over them, participants also experience sounds tuned to the frequency of the colour that appears above.
The idea was to make people think about the power of colour in their lives: to explore the direct and personal effect it can have on people's bodies and minds.
It was one of four works the design studio was exhibition at Vivid.
"We've been working on the project for about two months now. It's a big process collectively,'' Mr Steptoe said
A former John McGlashan College pupil, he trained in design at Massey University in Wellington and had been working in advertising.
After meeting Mr Muir at the Splore music festival, where he was doing design work, it was not long until he joined his team.
As a designer of light art he was involved in every element of the "bespoke'' works, although the custom-cut aluminium, welding and fabrication was left to the experts.
When designing the works, mostly done on computers, he had to take into consideration they would need to be able to be broken down into components for shipping, whether it be to Queenstown or Sydney.
Their aim was to create unique works which had not been seen before and had lots of impact.
Technological advances meant designers had more control over colours and brightness than ever before.
