The appeal of visual texture

In my talk about lighting programming at the software level last year, I mentioned how my earliest interest as a teenager came from a specific light fixture model, the Vari-Lite VL2, that I saw in all of the music videos at the time. There was something really iconic about that blocky moving light. I went to some shows in the years following that used them, as moving lights became more and more ubiquitous at rock shows. It's funny that, for me, this thing that was intended to make light, but the object itself had a textural visual appeal to me. Other kids were aroused by cars, but lighting instruments did it for me.

This sentiment is still prevalent in the way that I'm wired. For example, I'm enamored by the patterns and designs found all over the newer part of the Coronado Springs resort, where we stayed in July. The textures are everywhere in the tower building. Look at this wall of lamps in the lobby, not just in the way that they're arranged, but in the texture on the lamps themselves.

I can't explain why it appeals to me so much, I just know that I dig it. Middle Eastern tile work also elicits a similar response from me. It's a subtle but peculiar feeling in my head that is some form of joy, but it's hard to explain. There are other ways that we respond to visual stimuli, like the way an attractive person may cause arousal, but that's easier to explain because it's rooted in our instinctive drive for procreation. I don't know what purpose this serves for us.

Here's an even weirder one. There's something satisfying about road cases. You know, the things that they pack equipment in so it doesn't get damaged when it moves from one venue to the next. I own a case like this.

The elegant simplicity of road cases appeals to me. The spring-loaded handles stay flush and don't stick out until you need them. The twist locks... those sure are a brilliant mechanism. Opening and closing them is satisfying. You don't even take the equipment out of the bottom of the case, it just sits on it so that you never actually pick up and move the equipment directly. And how cool are rivets?

And it's not just simplicity or patterns that appeal to me. A properly rigged camera location looks like chaos, but the thing that ends up on the screen looks precise and controlled.

Lights are all over the place (you can't see the one lighting the barrels), wires and cables go everywhere, fabric and reflectors are hanging around to shape the light, and the camera itself usually has a bunch of stuff that looks sloppily connected to it. I can't explain why that's amazing. I was recently in a theatrical venue with all of the work lights on, and I was borderline over-stimulated by all of the things that I could see.

I don't know if "visual texture" is a thing, but I know that I like to see it.