AROUND HOME : Notes on New Lighting and Garden and Animal Events : Ya Ya Ho Lighting

REMEMBER WHEN home decorators discovered track lighting? Adapted from theater lighting, it liberated interiors from the clutter of table and free-standing lamps. Yet there was a price to pay: The big incandescent flood lights looked clunky, like a turbofan engine hanging under a jumbo jet’s wing. Mounting the track was a hassle that required fishing wires through the ceiling.

Then came halogen-quartz pin spots that used bulbs no bigger than your pinkie. But things were still dicey. Because quartz bulbs run on 12 volts instead of the usual household 120 volts, they require either a separate track or a costly, bulky transformer-adapter (for each bulb) to run off existing track.

Enter Ingo Maurer, the Munich-based designer who brought us Bulb Clear, the giant pop-art light bulb within a light bulb. His Ya Ya Ho system exploits the miniaturization of halogen bulbs with an extraordinarily flexible mounting system that does away with tracks entirely. Instead the lights hang from thin, parallel cables mounted on the walls, about 8 feet high. The cables also carry the low-voltage current, which does not present a shock hazard.

Like a Calder mobile, Ya Ya Ho elegantly marries engineering and sculpture with a modular kit of parts including alligator clips and bulbs with metal shades (for direct light) or mirrors (for indirect light bouncing off an upwardly aimed bulb). Some of the components, with their spacing devices and balance beams, evoke the image of a circus trapeze. More than just a high-tech lighting system, a Ya Ya Ho setup resembles a homage to the Flying Wallendas.

Available at Massini at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles (for a catalogue and price list, telephone ((213)) 652-1060); di-zin in Santa Monica, and Diva in Los Angeles. The average retail price is $1,400 to $2,000.