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  • There's an inherent attraction to light and being human,

  • and I think on a very deep psychological level,

  • light is this way in which we experience

  • the energy surrounding us in a very personal manner.

  • My name is Matt Dilling.

  • I'm the the founder of Lite Brite Neon studio,

  • and we manufacture, produce, and restore

  • neon works of art and design.

  • (neon sizzling)

  • Origins of the creative content

  • of a lot of the work at Lite Brite

  • comes from a variety of sources.

  • Sometimes people come with a napkin sketch.

  • Some people come with an Adobe Illustrator file.

  • And we have a whole design team,

  • who then we kind of work together

  • to help create layouts of what it might look like.

  • Scale it up and create a paper template using a pen plotter.

  • And that paper template actually becomes our guide

  • for what we're going to bend the neon to.

  • We take from the office into the glass shop.

  • We pick out the right size tubing,

  • with the right color, for the right size project.

  • (switches clicking)

  • (lighter flicking)

  • From there, we heat up the glass tubing.

  • (flame whooshing)

  • The torches heat the glass well in excess of 1,000 degrees

  • in order for it to get into its molten state.

  • We heat up and bend the glass tubing to match the template.

  • One of our chandeliers has over 100 different bends in it,

  • so each one of those bends has to be marked

  • for a heated-up bend.

  • We also have to allow the glass to cool between the bends

  • so that the next area can be worked on and heated up

  • in its own unique fashion.

  • It turns into spaghetti,

  • and then we have to make sure that that spaghetti

  • lines back up and cools to the template.

  • We use a blow hose to connect our mouth to the tube

  • to create a volume that's closed,

  • and we can control the pressure in there with our mouth.

  • There's just a variety of challenges that come up

  • inherently in working with glass.

  • Glass can crack due to stress,

  • and sometimes you'll just have a batch

  • that all it wants to do when it gets near a torch is crack.

  • After we've bent various components,

  • we have to go in using the cross-fire or the hand torch,

  • and actually weld all of those pieces together.

  • The last step on that is then

  • to weld on electrodes onto either end.

  • Each one of those steps is very, very specific.

  • I draw inspiration from so many different experiences.

  • It's hard to come up with one thing that's particular,

  • but one of the ways that I really am able

  • to connect with the creative is to float.

  • Floating is a similar experience to meditation,

  • to psychedelics.

  • Going into a blackened room

  • and laying out in a body of water and salt

  • that's heated to your body temperature,

  • and it allows

  • for all sort of external stimulation to fall away,

  • and your internal world really begins to bubble up

  • and manifest.

  • You really get to experience

  • a different relationship to your mind.

  • (flames whooshing)

  • I think I work with neon because I can't not work with it.

  • It's so challenging and so rewarding,

  • and those things are so intertwined

  • that there's no way of separating it out.

  • I have learned so much,

  • and continue to learn so much by working with it.

  • I find so much inspiration in working with it,

  • and I just continue to experience new and different things

  • through the medium.

  • It's that close to me at this point.

  • Once the neon tube is completed,

  • we have to hook it up to our manifold for bombarding.

  • The manifold is opened,

  • a vacuum is drawn,

  • we check the tube for leaks with our Tesla coil,

  • we close the tube back off,

  • and we heat it up

  • using a very large and powerful transformer.

  • As the tube is heated up,

  • it releases anything that's not inert inside the tube,

  • and we evacuate that out.

  • We introduce the gas into it,

  • and we seal the tube off,

  • sealing into that tube whatever gas we introduced into it.

  • I think my favorite part of making a neon light

  • is when I see it lit up for the first time.

  • Different gases, when electrified,

  • emit different wavelengths of light.

  • Neon gas is this very bright orange, fiery red color.

  • Argon gas creates a very intense blue,

  • but that light output that is produced

  • can then be expressed in a different wavelength

  • by coating the inside of the tubes with a phosphor coating

  • that takes that one wavelength of light

  • and emits a different wavelength.

  • We bring it over to the aging table,

  • where we hook it up to an aging transformer

  • and allow it to settle,

  • age the gas in that we've introduced to it.

  • There's always a stray particle of something

  • left inside the tube,

  • but that time that the oxide coating

  • can act to scrub whatever is left inside the tube

  • while things are getting settled into place.

  • (neon buzzing)

  • Once the tubes are aged in,

  • we move on to our process of assembling

  • two halves of the fixture together in a jig,

  • gluing up the center of the fixture to its spindle.

  • Once the adhesive dried,

  • we would connect the wires from the fixture together

  • into a transformer,

  • and we turn on power, and it lights up.

  • Part of what we love about what we do here

  • is that we try and put out into the world

  • the kind of things that we'd like to see.

  • I still am surprised when it lights up.

  • I'm still excited when I get to see it illuminated.

  • There's an ineffable quality to it.

  • To me, it's this insight

  • into the inner workings of the universe.

  • It literally is.

  • It's a way of looking at what is surrounding us

  • in the cosmos in a new light.

  • (tinkling)

There's an inherent attraction to light and being human,

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