It seemed just like another one of the increasingly annoying 'hate-tagged'
headlines that canon212.com has found to be indispensable and have now become
routine on that news portal's site - so I decided to find out exactly what
those
'miserable' 'death lights' are supposed to be.
Imagine my pleasant surprise to find this instead:
Here's the brief story that goes with it:
St. Peter’s Basilica is now
lit by over 100,000 LED lights
Before and after photos reveal St. Peter's in a whole new light
by J.P.Mauro
February 15, 2/19
Visitors and pilgrims to St. Peter’s Basilica, in Rome, have always been treated to the sight of the finest art adorning its high ceilings, but between the distance and the poor lighting, it has been easier for students to study the ceiling in pictures, rather than strain one’s neck for hours trying to distinguish minute details on the dimly lit domes.
Now, the treat is getting sweeter, as the Germany-based OSRAM light company has completed the much-needed lighting upgrade in St. Peter’s Basilica, trading the old halogen lights for around 780 LED luminaries, which house about 100,000 LED lights. The project came after OSRAM successfully completed similar installments in the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Square.
LEDs Magazine reports lights were installed at heights ranging from 12–110m (39–361 ft), brightening the domes by a factor of 10. The new light has illuminated frescoes, mosaics, paintings, statues, and other features that have waited in partial shadow for centuries — especially Michelangelo’s 137m-high (450-ft) main dome.
“This project provides a significant service, both to art lovers and to those who come on pilgrimage to this symbol of Catholicism,” said Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the governorate of Vatican City State. “We are pleased that a special light has been cast on this important location — thanks to the new illumination.”
Dr. Thorsten Müller, Head of Innovation at OSRAM, explains in the above video that the project relied on digitization of the Renaissance-era architecture, in order to determine light placement without disrupting the site. The result of such precise lighting is an advanced, digitally-controlled system that can be set bright enough to support 4K and even 8K ultrahigh-definition television transmission.
Osram CEO Olaf Berlien noted that the effort has been a distinct melding of the past with the present, one that will reduce energy emission from the Basilica’s lights by 90 percent:
“The project demonstrates just how history and high-tech can be combined in the best possible way by using the right expertise,” Berlien said. “More than 500 years of history are now being bathed in digitally controlled LED light.
“We are honored to return to the Vatican and to bring our expertise to St. Peter’s Basilica,” He added. “Our digital technologies are able to draw the eye toward the artistic masterpieces on the sides of the church. Previously, these beautiful mosaics and statues were literally in the dark. We also brought new light into the cupolas and we installed new glare-free lighting in the altar area. The history and the masterful works of art inside St. Peter’s have reached a new era.”
Now you might object to the fact that the video is really a propaganda clip for OSRAM, a Munich-based multinational lighting manufacturer company, which designed the new lighting system for the interior of St. Peter's Basilica.
But who with any experience of visiting huge shrines and basilicas will fail to appreciate the night-and-day difference between what seems so marvelously lighted now and the usual experience of trying to appreciate art and architecture that is poorly lit?
Even worse are those places where one must drop a coin in order for a section of the church (generally dim even in broadest daylight) to light up long enough for you just to see what it is supposed to be - for example, the main altar or Pala d'Oro at St Mark's in Venice (which is the first example that comes to my mind because it was such a frustrating experience) - but not long enough to observe details as one might like unless you want to spend the rest of your visit feeding coins to keep the light on.
I wonder if the new interior lighting at St Peter's is on in the entire basilica during tourist visiting hours - or will they come on automatically only if one wanders into a particular sector, and if so, how many tourists will it take to populate a sector before the lights go on automatically. If they do,I hope they stay on long enough until the tourists wander off to another sector.
And why would canon212.com be so contemptuous of the initiative as to misrepresent it as 'miserable death lights'?
I think the users of a news portal - and I, for one, am grateful to any news aggregator who can save me hours of hunting out news stories of interest - deserve to be treated with more respect than for Frank Walker and his assistants to pre-digest every item they choose and regurgitate it onto their website in poisonous bits. "Just the facts, Ma'am," as Joe Friday would say, and let us judge for ourselves what the facts amount to. Mr Walker maintains a personal site called Stumbling Block which usually just presents the main 'headlines' he highlights in canon212.com. I wish he would keep the main portal 'hate tag'-free, and let him indulge all his biases as much as he can on his personal site.
Not infrequently, on this forum, I editorialize on some headlines but I take care to identify them as my comments, not those of the original writer, by posting them in my trademark 'fisking blue'. But this now long-mislabelled forum has hardly ever been a forum for lack of participation, so for the simple reason that it is available (for which I cannot thank Gloria enough who set it up), it has turned into a record of what I consider interesting and significant about the Church (and occasionally, the world) and my reactions to the reports and commentaries I choose to post, as it must be clear to those who are interested enough to visit the thread.
In other words, for all intents and purposes, it serves as a blog, even if it is not (it's far more flexible, I think), and as such, it necessarily reflects my personal preferences in terms of the items I choose to post or not post). And if I had to run a news portal at all, it would be far easier to retain the original headlines of the items than have to think up 'creative' headlines about topics or persons I feel strongly about.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2019 03:52]