The LightClocks shown below are an example of how environmental sensing and creative visualisation can make the temporal dynamics of urban environments legible, revealing the changing patterns of natural and artificial light that shape human and more-than-human life. Future plans include Lightclocks across Lancaster University’s partner campuses and eventually installations of the Making Urban Ecologies project for comparative studies.
The two LightClocks above show time according to the changing luminosity and colour of the sky over the day and night and throughout the year. Daily and annual variations in natural light choreograph the behaviour and life cycle events of most life on earth. Meanwhile, artificial light at night adds noise to the natural cycle of night and day and can disrupt both human and non-human biologies and behaviours. The LightClock makes these cycles of natural and artificial light legible.
The light sensors that drive these particular LightClock are in Glasson Dock in Lancaster and the Haidian district of Beijing. The clocks trace out the changing ambient light as a helix of coloured marks. This appears as a spiral due to a perspectival view. This clock is optimised for light at night and the daytime colour (bluish white) and dusk and dawn (purple) are currently false colours so as to place the emphasis on nighttime variations. Gaps in the helix are related to maintenance or network issues. Each turn of the spiral corresponds to the changing light over a period of 24 hours; there are 60 turns showing a period of just over two lunar months. The helix is shown in perspective and thus appears as a spiral, with the present moment at the head of the outer ring (at the 12 o’clock position) and the past spiraling anticlockwise towards the centre. Cumulatively, this locates the viewer in the daily and seasonal variations of light and dark that act as a master clock for life on earth.
The mouse can be used to change the perspectival view on the helix. Double clicking returns to its original state.