Short Abstract

This Walk-and-Talk format will start at twilight to stimulate our sensory engagement with Kraków and our imagination of cities after dark. As our eyes enter the scotopic mode of nighttime vision, we will explore disturbed day-and-night temporalities and explore what we call ‘worlding with darkness’.

Description

With this Scotopic Walk & Night Talk, we invite EASST participants to take part in a guided tour and share with us an experience of Kraków at night. As we engage with light and darkness, we will discover and discuss urban, bodily and ecological temporalities that are increasingly disturbed by artificial light at night (ALAN).

In recent years, concerns about ‘light pollution’ have become a growing environmental concern. Scientific evidence suggests that ALAN disrupts the day-and-night rhythms of living organisms and ecosystems, including humans. “Sustainability” in lighting is often narrowed down to energy efficiency, while biodiversity issues are neglected. Less harmful lighting technology exists, but is rarely applied. As a result, the 'colonialization of night', as sociologist Murray Melbin (1987) called it, continues. Satellite data indicates that artificial lighting on Earth is increasing in both spatial extent and intensity.

The proposed joint exercise ‘Worlding with Darkness’ is designed to foster a more careful and caring relationship with our urban kin and our world after dark. To achieve this, we will try to enter a scotopic mode of seeing. Scotopia – from the Greek skotos, ‘darkness’, and –ōpia, ‘a condition of sight’ – draws attention to the capacity of the human eye to see under the dim light of the moon or even the stars. Scotopic vision has three characteristics: (1) it is more sensitive to contrasts than photopic vision; (2) it is almost colour blind and (3) it is a temporal condition that gradually takes over when photopic vision reaches its limits.

In the workshop, we will test our scotopic vision in a dark place near the conference venue. The exercise will combine experimental immersive elements, short presentations on urban darkness and a joint discussion “in the wild”. The event will begin after sunset (approximately 7:30 p.m.).