reading skyglow

diffractions<>witnessing

Skyglow is the illumination of the night sky by manmade sources or atmospheric changes. Artificial skyglow diffusion depends on a number of factors including cloud abundance. Intensity of skyglow is small compared that from a direct streetlight, but can extend across much larger areas and greatly impact biodiversity[1]. This timelapse is shot in Clapton, London, during the new moon, on mostly cloudy night.

With restrictions in place for much of the year, my garden and its zenith viewpoint became a primary point of reference for observational studies in the project in relation to diffraction in its multiple and collective meanings. From my garden I observe the skyglow, distracted by security lights that trace the movements of foxes, the intermittent ambulance flashes against brick, and a block of flats illuminated orange throughout the night. What other light is imperceptible to me, but sensed by other species? As the city’s illumination is weaving and shifting horizontally, beyond my vertical viewpoint, I consider what light emissions are potentially disrupting other species in this locality.

As I’ve been watching and capturing the skyglow, I’ve been thinking about the clouds embodiment of artificial skyglow as a kind of record, and what this represents in the present moment and over time, in relation to what I’m seeing and what knowledge is produced about diffuse reflectance and ecological light pollution. Haraway talks about optical metaphors and differences between reflection and diffractions, with diffractions as records of history[2]. If diffuse reflection can be a scientific measurement of the skyglow that produces specific knowledge about how much artificial light is emitted and diffused across an area, perhaps the optical diffraction of this through a lens / to a sensor can be considered as a recording of light infrastructure over time - a mode of evidencing the accumulation, and a tracing of behaviour. Light infrastructure as a narrative device to understand insecurity offers a view of the entanglement of past, present and future nighttime experience. When considered in Schuppli’s framework of the material witness[3], the specific properties of the skyglow are witness to the changes taking place above and around me.

To take the work further in the dual perspectives that Schuppli employs, I set out to process the raw image data to map the CCT (colour correlated temperature), extracting the information that can be used across disciplines and forums to make political and ecological impact claims, yet employing it as part of a method outside of this frame. What would this extracted and processed data tell me about the scientific practice of its origination, its authority to make a claim, and my consideration of it as a line of sigh and a means of recording a memory.