Art of Darkness: Special Session

This contribution reflects on a body of light art work developed under the motto “nothing can be that scary when illuminated”, a proposition that began as a gesture of courage and slowly revealed itself as a question worth holding open.

The work of “La Mia Paura è Bianca” began with a deeply personal premise, before evolving into an in-depth artistic exploration of what light actually does to the things we fear, and to us as observers. Light was understood as a psychological and emotional medium, capable of orienting a person toward a different relationship with their surroundings, with their fears, and with themselves. Yet the installations that most honestly maintained this tension were not the luminous ones. The works created using ultraviolet light operated according to a completely different logic: darkness was not the absence of the work, it was part of its structure.

In everyday built environments, we tend to notice only what is already sufficiently lit, outsourcing our sense of safety to brightness levels and moving quickly past what does not immediately declare itself. The UV installations could offer, instead, an invitation to perceive rather than merely to see. Darkness, it turned out, was not the place where fear lay, but the one where attention finally arrived.

This is what light art, unlike standard lighting, can do: it creates conditions in which perception becomes a conscious act. It asks the viewer to be present in a way that the illuminated world rarely demands. And in that presence, the initial question is transformed. It is no longer simply a matter of understanding whether light rules out fear, it is about what we are capable of seeing when we stop waiting for the light to do the work for us.

This presentation offers a reflection on “La Mia Paura è Bianca” artistic journey: what it means to use light both as a tool of reassurance and as a means of confrontation, and why the most honest answer to the question in the title might be: not always, not automatically, and that is precisely why it matters.

This paper explores how place-specific knowledge can inform darkness-sensitive lighting design in cultural heritage environments. A case study of Pikisaari in Oulu examines a lighting pilot developed through a qualitative and participatory process that combined context mapping and co-design and was informed by the concept of sense of place. The research is part of the Art of Darkness project, which studies darkness as a cultural, environmental, and experiential resource through lighting pilots in five European cultural heritage sites. The pilot site in Finland is a shoreline path on Pikisaari island, known for its industrial history and active present-day cultural and artistic community.

This paper asks what kinds of insights relevant to darkness-sensitive lighting design emerge through the concept of sense of place and place-specific knowledge in heritage contexts such as Pikisaari?

Sense of place is an interdisciplinary and relational concept describing the dynamic relationship between people and place. (Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1977; Cresswell, 2015; Erfani, 2022) It lacks singular definition and is inherently shaped by individual and shared experiences and interpretations. (Cross, 2001) Building on its recent conceptualisation as an interaction between individual, community, and place (Erfani, 2022), it is understood as a set of meanings, perceptions, and emotional bonds linked to a location, and formed through both tangible elements and intangible aspects. In this study, sense of place provides a framework for identifying place-based values and experiential qualities relevant for design, particularly in dark environments.

In cultural heritage contexts, both material and immaterial elements carry symbolic meanings that shape how places are experienced. Sense of place describes how these meanings are interpreted and attached to locations through lived experience. Understanding sense of place is therefore essential when making design interventions in heritage contexts, where recognising experiential value and symbolic meaning is as important as physical preservation. Moreover, lighting and darkness play a critical role in shaping sense of space, as they affect spatial perception, atmosphere, visual identity, and visibility. Darkness-sensitive lighting design must therefore recognise the experiential value of both darkness and cultural heritage without compromising either.

The research applied context-mapping and participatory co-design methods developed within Art of Darkness project (REF1) and in previous research in darkness-sensitive lighting design (REF2). Context mapping included place analysis (REF3), expert and walking interviews, and on-site observations. Co-design built on this foundation through participatory activities, such as workshops, perception walks, and scenario design games (REF4), involving local residents, cultural actors, and everyday users. Themes identified through context mapping informed the co-design process, enabling triangulation between environmental data, expert interpretation, and lived experience, providing a holistic understanding of the place.

Findings indicate that the sense of place in Pikisaari emerges through the interaction between environmental characteristics and user experience. The methods reveal how users assign meanings and values to both tangible and intangible characteristics of the site. Users express diverse perspectives: some experience darkness as an essential quality of the place, associating it with calmness, nature, and seclusion, while others prioritise legibility and safety. Despite these differences, recurring patterns include appreciation of cultural heritage, nature, everyday usability, and the potential to make historical layers and narratives more visible. These insights informed both temporary and permanent lighting solutions that respond to varying user needs while respecting darkness and enhancing awareness of cultural heritage.

The case study demonstrates that combining context mapping with participatory co-design is a useful approach to understanding sense of place in darkness-sensitive lighting design. Together, these approaches reveal experiential, social, and value-based aspects of the place, enabling the integration of diverse user perspectives into lighting strategies that balance preservation of darkness with the enhancement of cultural heritage.

“When I come home at night, I see the light in the windows of my neighbours and in the windows of the church, and I feel connected to our village in the city.”

This quote captures a resident’s experience of architectural and sociocultural heritage during the dark hours around Grundtvig’s Church in Bispebjerg, Copenhagen. It was shared during a co‑design workshop at the Copenhagen pilot site of the EU Horizon research project Art of Darkness (1).

Art of Darkness investigates architectural darkness‑sensitive lighting in cultural contexts across five European countries, emphasizing darkness as a resource for human and ecological well‑being. Although low light levels and darkness are often associated with discomfort or fear (2), research shows that balanced brightness levels and reduced contrast can enhance visibility and perceived safety (BLIND). Yet motivation for being in darkness can differ significantly between individuals, shaped by childhood memories, work practices, attachment to place, or an interest in natural darkness (BLIND).

Grundtvig’s Church and its surrounding housing estate were designed by P. V. Jensen‑Klint and represent a significant example of Danish architectural and social heritage (3). Generations of residents have contributed to a strong local community and shared traditions. To understand nocturnal atmosphere in an area like this, it is necessary to study the space from the perspective of those who inhabit it. As Böhme argues, atmospheres are co‑produced by people through everyday life and often remain imperceptible to outsiders (4).

This paper reports insights from the Copenhagen pilot site and addresses the research question:

How can co‑design workshops generate knowledge about citizens’ nocturnal experiences of architectural and sociocultural heritage around Grundtvig’s Church?

Citizens living in the area participated in two co‑design workshops: an idea‑generating indoor session and a nocturnal outdoor prototyping session. The workshops followed a research‑through‑design approach, merging creative design processes with academic inquiry to address complex issues (5). The process included three iterative components: developing a program, conducting experiments, and formulating reflections (6).

In the idea‑generating workshop, visual mapping facilitated discussion, supported interpretation, and surfaced tacit knowledge (6). Exercises focused on personal memories of the area, using a Scenographic Lens as an analytical tool (BLIND), and on sharing nocturnal experiences of the site. During the outdoor workshop, participants engaged in lighting exercises that explored form, materiality, lighting hierarchy, the play of brilliance (7), and social aspects of different lighting scenarios, informed by reflections from the first workshop.

The findings show that the workshops provided unique insights into residents’ sense of belonging and the interrelation between architectural and social heritage. Participants described the area as their “village,” emphasizing mutual care within the community and the positive impact of the church and surrounding architecture during both day and night. While testing lighting scenarios, citizens clearly articulated when lighting felt appropriate or out of place in relation to their understanding of the site’s character and atmosphere. These insights will inform the design of a future temporary installation employing darkness‑sensitive architectural lighting near Grundtvig’s Church, in the context of the Art of Darkness research project.

References:

1.Art of Darkness – AoD (2025) EU Horizon Research project. https://artofdarkness.eu/

2.Dunn, N., Edensor, T. (2020) Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices. London and New York: Routledge

3.Jensen, T.B. (2007) P.V. Jensen-Klint. Kunstakademiets Arkitektskoles Forlag.

4.Böhme, G. (2017) The Aesthetics of Atmospheres. London: Routledge.

5.Frayling, C. (1993) Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art and research Papers 1.

6.Sanders, E.B, Stappers, P.J. (2012) Convivial Design Toolbox. Generative research for the front end of Design. BIS.

7.Kelly, R. (1952) Lighting as an Integral Part of Architecture. College Art Journal.

This paper presents a co-design process aimed at reshaping the nocturnal environment of Piazza Scaravilli, a square in the university district at the historic city center of Bologna, Italy. The site carries a layered relationship with darkness: firstly, it was once home to the Specola, an 18th-century astronomical observatory deliberately placed on a dark zone for celestial observation that still stands as a mayor cultural heritage presence visible from the piazza. Secondly, today, the square faces persistent challenges, mainly related to the perception of insecurity and a feeling of social degradation. Thirdly, the square is already equipped with a video-mapping and event-lighting infrastructure, installed under prior renovation of the square, which remains largely underused. By reactivating and exploiting the existing technological resource, the pilot project seeks to regenerate the square through participatory design processes, aligned with the aesthetic, cultural, and sustainability values of darkness explored within the Horizon Europe funded Art of Darkness project (AoD, 2025).

The study transitions from theoretical critique to situated (Rendell, 2020), embodied field action, moving participants from passive subjects of urban infrastructure to active agents of the nightscape (Flugelman, 2024). This paper explores actions from the Bologna pilot site and addresses the research question: How can situated, sensory-based ludic co-design methodologies enable participants to become active authors of a shared nocturnal imaginary?

The workshops focused on engaging a diversity of students within the UNIBO academic community, which is the primary user of the square, across two distinct phases, a creative workshop week and a later more speculative series of workshops. This paper will relate only to the phase 1, consisting of a week-long immersive residency functioning as a living laboratory: participants tested how collective, embodied actions can reclaim the nocturnal atmosphere and explored the expressive potential of the existing video-mapping infrastructure through hands-on activation.

The methodology employs a sequence of co-design methods developed to stimulate sensory awareness and facilitate the expression of specific needs in relation to the nocturnal use and perception of the square. Drawing on embodied, ludic, and performative approaches, from sensory walks and tactical lighting interventions to hands-on experimentation with light and darkness, participants engage directly with the nocturnal environment as both material and medium. By engaging the body as the primary sensing tool, students transition from observing the night to physically appropriating its darkness, collectively re-enchanting the night experience and opening the square to a plurality of nocturnal uses and identities.

Findings suggest that the shift from passive consumers to authors of the nocturnal imaginary is rooted in collective, embodied appropriation: when students experience different nocturnal ambiences and physically act upon the night rather than merely inhabit it, a stronger sense of belonging, shared responsibility, and design agency (Rendell, 2020) emerges, alongside a measurably enhanced perception of safety and social comfort. The paper also examines how the diversity of methods produced distinct experiential and social outcomes, contributing to an emerging toolkit for darkness-sensitive co-design.

Ultimately, the framework demonstrates that shared nocturnal experience enables communities to collectively reimagine what the night of a specific place can become, producing new nocturnal imaginaries. (Flugelman, 2024; Bottà & Petrilli, 2023). Sensory appropriation and collective agency can open towards future imaginabilities, expanding the horizons of what the everynight (Briers, 2023) could be, to overcome prevailing prejudices about public spaces and the role of urban lighting. By activating dormant urban infrastructure through participatory design, the research offers a sustainable model for ephemeral urban regeneration.

This paper examines darkness and privacy in Ancher’s House (1884–1935) in Skagen, Denmark. The study aims to nuance the perception of darkness and its relation to privacy as rooted in cultural and historical frameworks. Home to the painters Michael Ancher, Anna Ancher, and their daughter Helga Ancher, the house played a significant role in artistic practice and everyday domestic life. By investigating both the original house and the extension designed between 1911 and 1913, the paper asks how light and darkness were situated in habitation and how these conditions shaped occupants’ experience of privacy.

The paper argues that light and shadow are not merely visual effects but create spatial zones. These zones affect how occupants perceive themselves and others, and how they experience being open to or closed off from others. In this sense, darkness is treated not as a lack of light, but as a spatial and experiential condition within the domestic interior.

The investigation combines spatial analysis, visual interpretation, and textual study. First, it examines the space organization and sunlight orientation of Ancher’s House before and after the extension, focusing on window placement, room sequence, ceiling height, and the distribution of light and darkness across the house. Second, it uses light-zones and shadow-zones as analytical tools to read Anna Ancher’s domestic paintings as spatial documents. Particular attention is given to how figures are situated within shadow-zones, often partially concealed or turned away from the viewer, creating a tension between visibility and withdrawal. This compositional strategy establishes a form of privacy through partial revelation. Third, letters exchanged during the planning of the extension are used to trace how light and darkness were intended, negotiated, and perceived in the house.

The paper further approaches privacy as boundary drawing, structured and negotiated across different scales, from the house to the room, the body, and the self. In this perspective, light and darkness operate as spatial agents that facilitate access, control, withdrawal, and exposure situationally and temporally. Rather than relying only on rigid physical boundaries such as walls and doors, domestic privacy in Ancher’s House emerges through gradients of visibility and obscurity. Shadow-zones offer a softer and more fluid way to divide space, allowing occupants to engage with others without full exposure.

The comparison between the old house and the extension reveals two different orchestrations of light and darkness. In the old half-timbered farmhouse, low ceilings and one-directional windows produced relatively clear light-zones and deep shadow-zones. These conditions enabled a subtle negotiation between family togetherness and individual withdrawal. In the extension, broader daylight and multi-directional windows introduced a greater sense of openness. Yet this openness also exposed tensions between architectural intention and occupants’ lived experience. The case suggests that darkness cannot be understood only through the size and placement of windows, but through the presentation of space as a whole, including ceiling height, colors, surfaces, and partitions.

By situating darkness in relation to privacy, this paper contributes to the understanding of darkness in a heritage home as an aesthetic, social, and spatial medium. Ancher’s House shows how shadow-zones can construct thresholds that allow engagement without intrusion and closeness without full exposure. Darkness thus appears not as a deficiency, but as an active condition in the domestic interior. The paper proposes that examining light-zones and shadow-zones in relation to privacy offers a way to understand how home can support both togetherness and individual withdrawal in a nuanced, situational, and temporal manner.

This abstract examines the relationship between light and darkness as a fundamental condition for human perception, the formation of colour, and spatial experience. Within the tension between light and darkness, not only do colours emerge, but also the very conditions that allow the world to appear as sensory and meaningful. The absence of either light or darkness results in a dissolution of visual structures: without darkness, perception is reduced to an overexposed flatness without contrast, while the absence of light eliminates the possibility of experiencing colour, form, and depth. Contrast thus appears as a necessary condition for visibility.

Drawing on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s theory of light, darkness and colours, the abstract discusses the status of darkness as an active and constitutive factor in the experience of colour. In contrast to a classical scientific tradition, where darkness is primarily understood as the absence of light, Goethe insists that darkness possesses its own qualitative significance. According to this perspective, colours do not arise as isolated phenomena, but within relational tensions between light and darkness. Darkness thus functions not merely as a background, but as a dynamic counterpart that enables the appearance of light and intensifies the perceived strength and character of colours. This approach implies a phenomenological orientation toward how the world appears to perception, rather than solely how it can be quantified.

The abstract connects this theoretical framework to contemporary artistic practice within lighting design and visual art, where darkness is employed as a central design parameter. In this practice, darkness operates both as an immaterial absence of light and as an active, material layer in the construction of sculptures and installations. With both additive and subtractive colour mixing, the work investigates how darkness can generate spatiality, depth, and perspective. Here, darkness becomes a prerequisite for the appearance of colour and an active component in the composition that shapes the viewer’s experience. Concrete examples of experimental methods and completed works are presented, demonstrating how darkness can be operationalized as a sensory and structuring element in design processes.

Furthermore, darkness is addressed from a temporal perspective. As an integral part of the diurnal cycle, darkness enables experiences that transcend the immediate and the visible, for example in the perception of the night sky and its cosmic dimensions. Darkness thus opens an expanded spatial awareness, in which the human position in the world is put into perspective. At the same time, darkness functions as a dynamic factor in time-based work, where perception unfolds over time. This allows for an expansion of spatial experience toward a four-dimensional understanding, in which movement, transformation, and temporality are integrated into the aesthetic experience.

The purpose of the presentation is to share methodological approaches, experimental investigations, and practice-based knowledge concerning the use of darkness in art and design processes. By positioning darkness as an active and productive factor, the presentation seeks to contribute to an interdisciplinary discussion on how colour design and the use of darkness can be rethought and integrated into contemporary design practices within fields such as architecture, design, and visual art.

Urban light pollution has a significent negative impact both on human health as well as on the health of wildlife and nature, accelerating biodiversity loss. The Nordic countries with long dark seasons contribute to this development notably. For some years now, various scientific disciplines have tackled the challenges of urban light pollution, helping to raise awareness and inform practice among urban planners and city officials. While European and global policies to protect the night and its nocturnal dwellers are still in-the-making, the more fundamental challenge is how to strengthen the relationship between humans and nature. Creative and artistic practices can help shift people’s inner worlds, fostering stronger connection with the more-than-human world.

This study explores urban darkness with Helsinki residents through the co-development of artistic interventions. It started by asking: What do citizens of the Nordics know about darkness and what associations does it evoke for them? Can darkness be worked with as a material, and if so, what are its qualities? Does site-specific darkness exist, and how can local knowledge of darkness be translated to other places? In the study, we combined a community research diary, participatory workshops, and a “darkness library” of locally curated knowledge, piloted on a Helsinki island know for the city’s richest urban darkness and a strong community. Residents contributed valuable insights into darkness, urban ecology, and the benefits of reducing artificial light at night. Participants engaged with imaginative exercises, shared lived experiences, and co-produced place-based understandings. The island setting, with its clear geographic radius, fostered focused reflection, strong participation, and inspiring practices. Supported by the chosen formats, the artistic methods provide complementary ways of knowing, moving from awareness-raising to transdisciplinary praxis and knowledge co-creation—key ingredients for sustainability transformations. Further work will examine how to scale and adapt these community interventions across neighborhoods and cities through the concept of the “darkness library”, while also addressing challenges of replicability and variations in local environments, atmospheres, temporalities, and cultures.

To conclude, the research project sees creative practices as valuable contributors to sustainable transformation: they surface situated knowledge, help developing and practicing environmental literacy and trigger collective action. Effective implementation appears to depend on working within a meaningful local communities and on inspiring activities that strengthen the networks of the community, which together can enable broader, scalable strategies—for urban darkness in particular and for a stronger human-nature connection more generally.