LUCE estratti LUCE 320_Peterson_Paul Normandale | Page 6

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Paul
Normandale
Total
visual feast
Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack or
Depeche Mode, for instance. Three different
musical visions, three different approaches
to stage. What kind of relationship do you
establish with them?
The relationship varies from artist to artist;
in the end, it is to bring my experience and
vision to their experience and vision.
Each artist has different strengths, interests
and ideals. I guess it is my role to create from
what is often not actually said or illustrated,
to find the underlying, the unspoken.
Bring the technology or the theatre to the
specific arena, in a practical but innovative
tourable way. I am lucky to work with teams
of people who bring help to such vision.
P
aul Normandale has the unique ability
to read and interpret the stories within
each song, to identify the musical narration
the artists want to express and share with
the audience. His is an intense descriptive job.
Paul uses lights and colours to give visual
perception to tales made of music and words.
The Show Lighting Designer work is a very
complex one; one has to know how to create
and coordinate hundreds of lights and effects
with the artist music, each time creating
a unique combination.
Artists such as Massive Attack, Chemical
Brothers and Björk go beyond the traditional
idea of musician, and their concerts, in a
perfect symbiosis with
Paul Normandale’s lights and bright screens,
are actual theatrical performances.
You use moving lights, light beams and
screens to narrate stories, not just to light up
the stages. Every song is a story with its related
scenes. How do you create this link?
The beams are there merely to connect the
space between the darkness in which the story
of the artist is told. Lights are now variously
in my eyes made up of confetti to screen,
lasers or candles; it is a total visual feast,
a desire to bring the line of the performer
to the observer, closer and closer.
Your activity concern more than lighting
music shows, the Tate Turbine Hall or Rain
for instance. Could you tell us something
more about this?
The space of a performance or interaction
is often the most interesting aspect, how
it has to be respected, used, and enhanced
for a moment during the action. The challenge
of the space is the most interesting aspect;
not a restriction or a limitation, but something
to embrace, the vast void of the Turbine Hall
or the heated demand of a festival for
80,000 people. Taking the advantages
of each space and using it.
An artist you would like to work with?
Banksy.
If I say Light, you say…
… never grey.
You’re more than a lighting designer,
how do you like to call yourself?
Variously and by others: production design,
lighting designer, observer, inconvenience.
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LIGHTING DESIGNERS / LUCE 320
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