Two weeks agoAl Gurdon was at a dance studio in Manhattan, having just wrapped days of rehearsing for Beyoncé's Super Bowl halftime show. Mr. Gurdon, the lighting designer for Sunday's show, stood in the midst of stacks of rack-mounted computers, consoles for controlling the machines, and screens on which virtual renderings of the show are displayed (renderings veiled in secrecy the CIA would be hard-pressed to penetrate).

These are the tools of Mr. Gurdon's specialty: the lighting for stadium concert tours and televised musical performances. The 53-year-old lighting designer has illuminated everyone from Coldplay to the Who to Madonna, in productions such as the last three Super Bowl halftime shows, "The X Factor" and the MTV Europe Music Awards. He also served as a consultant for the opening and closing ceremonies at last summer's Olympics.

Yet, surrounded by the machines that allow him to control all at once the color, aim, beam width and brightness of more than 2,000 lighting elements, he says: "I'm totally uninterested in technology for its own sake."

It's not that Mr. Gurdon takes his high-tech tools for granted. He recognizes, however, that the key to his art is knowing not just how to use all those wonderful toys but how and when not to. Any children's party DJ can brandish a kaleidoscopic cacophony of whirling spinamajiggers, frenetic gobo-trons and dervishing lasermabobs. Hyperkinetic, computer-controlled lighting has become so commonplace that any Holiday Inn function room can outglare Times Square. So what's a lighting designer to do? Less.

Mr. Gurdon quotes approvingly from a 2006 technical rider that Iggy Pop has included with his performance contracts. A rambling and opinionated comic document, the rider is legendary in rock production circles. It begs lighting directors to stop with all the nonstop moving of the moving lights, saying, "Most LDs suffer from some sort of nervous disorder that won't permit their hands to stay still for longer than 8 milliseconds." The Iggy reminder for lighting directors? "Nobody goes home whistling the lights."