On the right you can find the Bortle Scale and a video of how artificial light has created a sky-glow above most densly populated areas, and how artificial illumination at night affects diverse eco-systems.
The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale is a nine-level numeric scale that measures the brightness of the stars and the night sky (naked-eye and stellar limiting magnitude) of a particular location. It quantifies the observability of celestial objects (significant naturally occurring physical entities, associations or structures which current science has demonstrated to exist in outer space) and the interference caused by light pollution and skyglow (wide scale illumination of the sky or parts of the sky at night).
The most common cause of skyglow is man-made lights that give off light pollution. John E. Bortle created the scale and published it in the February 2001 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine to help amateur astronomers compare the darkness of observing sites. The scale ranges from class 1, the darkest skies available on Earth, through class 9, inner-city skies.
Skyglow is a result of anthropogenic activity, that prevents us from seeing stars, planets, constellations, and events occuring in the nocturnal celestial vault. According to the World Atlas of Light Pollution, skyglow can reach as far as 200 kilometres away. In this case it is co-cause of the decline in fireflies’ population, as well.
My artistic practice wants instead to display an environment where both fireflies and the Milky Way can be fearlessly enjoyed.
Before my final reflections, I want to refer to some recent artistic operations I could experience, which paradoxically used artifical light, to confront themselves with fireflies and their environment. In these cases the possibly vanishing eco-system of fireflies is used as a sort of inspiration by designers and artists.
In 2023, during the Nobel Week Lights in Stockholm, Studio Toer from the Netherlands, created an artwork, which consisted of flying light points simulating the movements of fireflies. The artwork is still travelling around the world: the light points glow, dart and hover above the ground. The ever-changing bioluminescence of each one is reflected in the ground below. In a group, they create a dynamic light scene that triggers curiosity and awe.
(https://studiotoer.com/firefly-field/)
When I went to see the artwork with my son, who is the main reason for all my practice around this theme, around what inhabits darkness and its joyful fruition, I realized that, despite the awe, he knew the show was a fake. The "fireflies" were not blinking, there was snow on the ground, and he questioned: how could it be that such fragile creatures, appearing only under specific conditions could be showed in such a contrasting ambience? In the video you can see my son's first reaction. The video is deliberately left home-video style, with no retouching done. Still I'd like to present the oeuvre of Studio Toer, as in its simplicity it was effective.
Another Dutch designer and artist, Daan Roosegaarde, concentrates his work on an alternative use of light and lighting systems. His work is spectacular, well financed, sensory and interdisciplinary, all characteristics that have an impact.
As far as this exposition is concernced Seeing Stars is an excellent example of a sort of situationistic experience to make an audience think about the excess of light, preventing us, in fact, to see stars.
Launched 2022 in Franeker and Leiden, the project aimed to expand to cities like Sydney, Venice, Stockholm, and Reykjavik. It entailed a controlled switching-off of city and non-essential lights. In the image on the right you can see the result of the experiment on one street. It fostered a sense of connection, not only with our community but also with our planet. Seeing Stars was a collaboration between residents, the government, UNESCO Netherlands, and Studio Roosegaarde to switch off all non-essential lights, billboards, and streetlights. By removing light pollution on a city-wide scale, the project allowed everyone to reconnect with the universe and experience the magic of starlight. (https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/seeing-stars)
Another 2024 Daan Roosegaarde project, Firefly Garden, in Bali features a science-based breeding program aimed at growing firefly populations. Its goal is to restore fireflies to Bali’s ecosystem as part of Indonesia’s cultural heritage.
Daan Roosegaarde: When I tell locals about the Firefly Garden, they get emotional. Fireflies were abundant 20 years ago, but now they’re nearly gone. They need clean air, clean water, and no light pollution. I see them as gatekeepers for a better future.
Firefly Garden fosters harmony between humans and nature, offering a rare opportunity to witness these magical creatures.
The current Firefly Garden pilot in Canggu, Bali, spans 1,000 m² as a preview to the upcoming 3,000 m² FIREFLY GARDEN. This sanctuary hosts butterflies by day and fireflies by night, supported by flora and fauna that sustain their life cycles. The garden includes a dedicated firefly nursery, where firefly eggs grow into adults over 4 to 10 months. The environment is kept free from light pollution, and the surrounding waters are continuously purified.
Roosegaarde's work continues his Dutch ancestors' legacy in Indonesian tea cultivation, as described in Hella S. Haasse's The Tea Lords.
Self-commissioned by Studio Roosegaarde, in collaboration with Pak Wayan and his team of experts, Udayana University, and Nuanu.
(https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/firefly-garden)
Ten years ago instead, 2014, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, I saw some artworks by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Among others one of her infinity mirror rooms.
https://louisiana.dk/en/exhibition/kusama-installation/
The immersive experience in a dark room sorrounded by artificial light bulbs, walking on a plank on a pool, resembled both fireflies on the water or the sensation of floating in the Cosmos, while mirrors were perpetuating lights in a felt perpetuity: blinking, flickering, glowing.
The picture actually shows my husband and me at the exhibition. Those lights, at least to me and in my imagination, could have been both fireflies and stars. Mediated by artist's devices.
In this last paragraphs I became personal and dared to display a private video and picture from the recent past to represent memories of fireflies as done by others.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Dutch and Japanese artists and designers in particular are dealing with the decay and the dwindling population of fireflies or the visibility of the stars and the night sky. The Netherlands is indeed a densely populated area where light pollution on the map is visible and constitutes an inexorable and worrying blotch. Japan, on the other hand, has in the past shown care towards the representation and preservation of fireflies. The illustrations shown in the painting nights room 5 of the virtual exhibition are a demonstration of this.
Conclusions Reflections:
Why am I exhibiting these findings to make the final user and visitor reflect on light pollution?
Because I hope and believe that showcasing the fascination for darkness and discussing why it mattered in the past and to whom it mattered, might ignite change and restore respect, contributing somehow to re-phrase both the environmental and the pollution history.
The skies observed by those who carved on rocks, those who drew star charts and those who manufactured the Nebra Sky Disc were possibly darker, or actually brighter, as there was no artificial light pollution to cancel the darkness necessary for the celestial objects to shine brightly.
Between the first four rooms and the following ones, there is a leap of 1500 years of darkness, to get to the moment when the mediated expression was used to depict the introduction of artificial light.
It is also a topical moment as urban planning develops along and influences the mise en scène and mise en espace of the human species and its buildings, private or public ones, monumental or functional ones. Lighting goes along with how the human species has built and imposed itself on other species.
Later rooms have been developed as a place to show how the first attempts to capture darkness on the precursor of cinematographic devices have taken different routes and led to various inventions, the daguerreotype, the photographic revolver, and the usage of light sensitive plates directly, to avoid camera and lenses.
Reasons to represent the night and darkness, or creatures shining in the dark, using a mediated form of expression, be it rock carvings or composing an extreme high number of pictures delivered by a camera travelling in time with a telescope sent out in the Cosmos, have been diverse:
There have been petroglyph artists, who might have been astronomers ante litteram, religious guides, who held the cultural heritage, scientists, photographers, journalists, film-makers, who for different reasons have been fascinated by the stories they could unfold study by observing the night and the nocturnal celestial vault, possibly accompanied by fireflies in June in the northen hemisphere.
Those who interpreted the night through the media, had an interest in darkness beyond the Uncanny.
What matters is that those findings today help me as an artist and film-scientist to re-interpret them. They enable me to delve into the field of environmental history and the issues of light and sound pollution.
Day needs night, light needs dark. Let's marvel at the incredible power of light and consequently of darkness. Throughout the ages, light has fostered scientific discovery and technological innovation, and inspired creativity. Light shapes our world in profound ways.
I am not against the use of light. I advocate for the responsible use of light when and where it is needed. We can work together to protect the night by following the Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting at Night (ROLAN) and continue to celebrate the role light plays in our lives.
As you might remember the motivation to start this project were the fireflies and the desire to preserve their eco-system for my son and therefore the future generations. I wanted the behind the scenes to be visible with two goals: show my research process and advocate societal change. I don't want the fireflies to disappear and therefore I want to create awareness around how important the night can be, hold it and do not be afraid.
As a curator and organizer of this trip through time I chose to be both a personal narrator, omniscient and present through my own work and expose work of others. I was recently inspired by Maurizio Catellan, who did a similar choice in Moderna Museet. I hope I could take you by the hand and guide you through the rooms and through my process, so you could understand.
Maybe it was too much to have 3 functions: the scientist, reporting from other scientist's studies; the artist, creating her own room with her own art work; and the organizer.
I cannot place myself in any tradition of curators and cannot secure this piece in my usual practice, but my wish was to take you into different dark places in my "dream gallery", my cabinet of curiosities. I see this as my agency for this piece.
I wanted to take you to the olive groves where "my" fireflies mate, in a room with my own work, showing you myself as a place, a site of memories. Those fireflies are in the past, they are my own excavation in myself and my childhood and they have influenced me as an artist and in the representation choices I make. I am, as I said before, an ar(t)chaeological site myself, a territory, an eco-system. From here on I sought for other findings and looked for peers who had the same interest in the representation of darkness and of these enchanting creatures.
For my own piece in the room of my own I chose to start filming the night on the men made terraces with the olive groves, close to my parent's home.
It is an experiment with resilience and patience through long takes and almost static images. I want to suggest altitudinal and elevation zonation. The takes are more or less the same lengths and divided into three sessions with two superimpositions in the image processing.
The movement will be vertical, ideally bringing the audience from the foothill and hills zone to a montane zone with woods and forests, to pre-alpine and alpine meadows, later following mountain profiles, tilting up into the sky above the horizon into the Milky Way.
25 minutes is the time – according to ophthalmologist’s studies – the eyes need to have “full control” in the dark. The eyes of the audience will slowly start to meet fireflies and even the flash of a light house and a thunderstorm in the distance of an actually clear and starry night. Foothills areas are obviously much more subject to anthropic activities. While up on the Gardetta Plateau the human presence is almost imperceptible.
