Lighting design shapes what we see, feel, and remember, yet it disappears the moment a performance ends. The Canon project sets out to change that. It explores lighting design as a vital, but still under-documented, field within technical theatre.

Lighting design lives at the intersection of scenography, direction, and artistic vision. Unlike physical objects, it leaves behind only traces, like plans, files, notes and memories. Canon turns these fragments into meaningful, accessible documentation.

Our key questions

• What are the possible ways of documenting design and designers?
• How can we represent the designs and their results in a online data-driven platform?
• How can designers prepare the safeguarding of their heritage?
• How can we support collection owners who have limited expertise in the field to document what they have?

What we do

Canon develops and test innovative approaches to documenting lighting design, including:

• Digitizing and safeguarding lighting design heritage.
• Preserving complex formats such as 3D models, control data, and virtual visualizations.
• Documenting performances as artistic works.
• Capturing technical frameworks (light plots, cue lists, and more).
• Describing creative processes and methodologies beyond individual productions.
• Showcasing designers’ work as evolving artistic oeuvres.

Our impact

• Documenting four diverse lighting designers as in-depth case studies, available in a sustainable open digital format.
• Building expertise in documentation strategies, from selection criteria to file management.
• Developing an ontology to support a standardized and widely accepted data structure.
• Creating practical guidelines for documenting lighting design.