Illuminights

Abstract

As part of the urban nightscape, illumination of urban environments across Europe has gained significance recently. Altering the aesthetic appearance of material surfaces, urban illuminations transform our sensory every night experiences of space; experiences that, within geography, have not been dealt with in depth. This article undertakes an ethnographic study of the sensory everynight experiences of the changed aesthetics of illuminated spaces in Copenhagen, outlining three arguments. First, illumination functions as a signifier, transforming the experience of space and staging certain performative practices. Second, the illumination of select objects harmonizes connections between subjects and objects, releasing a potential for social contestation over spatial meaning. Third, illumination creates an illusory second reality, promoting alternative opportunities for engaging with the urban fabric. The article concludes that the lived sensory experiences of urban illuminations must be acknowledged in planning and need to be examined further within geographies of nighttime spaces.

Drinking in the dark: shedding light on young people’s alcohol consumption experiences

“…Here, the practice of lighting candles was used by louisa as 'a tool' (Bille & Sørensen, 2007, 263) to exercise a 'gentle suggestion' (Sumartojo, 2014, p. 62) that she desired the night ahead to be low-key. lighting then, was cultivated towards relaxation (Bille, 2015), transforming the young people's experiences of space (see Ebbensgaard, 2015). louisa was relying upon her friends possessing the corporeal capacities to sense rhythms of light and sound (see Duffy, Waitt, Gorman-Murray, & Gibson, 2011); it seemed her friends responded to the sculptural proposition (Moore, 2013), as they attuned themselves to the rhythmicity of the moment, through the pace of their consumption of alcohol.…”

Untitled

“…Las investigaciones científicas que existen sobre la noche o la oscuridad consideran la luz o el día un punto de arranque, partiendo entonces de una postura relacional o complementaria; la noche a manera de la ausencia de la luz. Esto se refleja en los estudios recientes de Edensor (2010;, Shaw (2014 y 2018) y de Ebbensgaard (2015), quienes proponen la "reducción luminosa", es decir, las maneras para hacer que los paisajes nocturnos resulten más agradables a la vista. Dichas investigaciones parten de una posición político-ambiental sobre la iluminación urbana y sus fines.…”

Moving Through the Lit World: The Emergent Experience of Urban Paths

“…It contributes to how we make the environments we navigate as we go through them, for example as we switch lights on and off, open and close curtains so light may enter or be blocked, or are subject to (or resist) regulatory frameworks for the use of lights on cars and bicycles. Accordingly, the design, manipulation and utility of light as an aspect of how space feels has recently been explored in a wide range of contexts, scales, and temporalities: domestic and intimate (Bille, 2015; Daniels, 2015), public and site-specific (Ebbensgaard, 2015; Sumartojo, 2015), festive and aesthetic (Barns & Sumartojo, 2015; Edensor, 2015b; Papadaki, 2015), metropolitan (Isenstadt et al, 2015), historical (Nye, 2010; Schivelbusch, 1995) and in its relationship with darkness (Edensor, 2015a; Morris, 2011). Nevertheless, such studies tend to be site specific or, in other cases, attention has focused on how people experience light or darkness as it is arranged and designed by themselves or by others, as part of events or activities, or on people as users of lighting.…”

“…Indeed, while scholars working in the field of urban lighting design have argued that automated lighting is integral to how urban atmospheres are constituted and experienced (Ebbensgaard, 2015; Shaw, 2014; Slater, Sloane, & Entwistle, 2015), often for practical reasons, light researchers and designers seek to solve or work on locality-based issues, rather than following the routes that diverse people trace through the city. Some recent research has attended to how people experience light and the atmospheres afforded by it as they move through environments, in outdoor arts settings (Edensor & Lorimer, 2015; Morris, 2011) and in homes (Pink & Leder Mackley, 2016).…”