Configuring Light/Staging the Social: Dialogues between the social sciences and lighting practices

光是我们组织社会空间的一种材料;光是日常现代生活的基础设施，没有它，我们所做的许多事情都是不可能的：例如，如果我们只有自然光，那么夜间活动就会严重减少，对社会生活的形式产生重大影响。我们对人造光的技术操作带来的好处是巨大的：当代城市的经济严重依赖于它，遗产和创意产业需要它（例如，大型公共建筑的照明是城市品牌的重要组成部分），而构成城市民事治理的大部分内容（犯罪，安全和安保）都将光作为基本的基本要求。此外，作为创意产业，制造和维护的一部分，照明是一个主要的经济部门。与此同时，我们能源消耗的生态成本也引起了激烈的争论，并因此在政治话语和公共政策中形成了框架，因为新的照明技术和欧盟法规试图创造可持续能源。此外，光（以及它的缺乏-黑暗）对我们的健康至关重要，例如在睡眠，情绪和幸福的调节中，如果没有适当的调节，可能会引起严重的健康反应（如SAD的情况和对光污染的日益关注所强调的那样）。这些辩论和问题是我们系列研讨会的更广泛的社会背景，“配置光/社会舞台”，旨在建立社会科学，设计，建筑和城市规划之间的综合对话，重点关注社会生活的这一最基本的特征。令人惊讶的是，鉴于光的重要性，如上所述，几乎没有关于光的综合思考和研究。虽然它是技术人员、建筑师、工程师或设计师和一些政策制定者的核心关切，但它在很大程度上被忽视，或者在社会科学中很少得到研究。虽然引起学术界对这一最重要的社会材料的关注似乎很重要，但从业人员的技术和设计知识也将受益于对其实践的社会和文化方面及其影响的更严格的理解。然而，迄今为止，这些不同学科之间以及学术界和从业人员之间几乎没有进行对话。我们的系列研讨会旨在解决光的社会科学知识的差距，并将其牢牢地放在社会学，地理学和人类学等学科的学术议程上;同时弥合学术知识与光工程师，建筑师和设计师以及城市规划师的技术和设计知识之间的鸿沟。社会科学与实践者之间的这种对话应该会产生相当大的影响：我们的目标是产生知识和方法，以便更好地研究光的配置方式及其在构建社会生活中所扮演的角色，并设想这些新的思维方式和与光的合作将直接影响工业和城市规划的实践者。

Light is a material through which we organize social space; light is the infrastructure of everyday modern life and without it much of what we do and take for granted would not be possible:for example, if we only had natural light, invevitably nightime activities would be severely reduced with a significant impact on the forms of social life that can be sustained. The benefits of our technological manipulation of artificial light are immense: the contemporary city's economy critically depends upon it, heritage and creative industries require it (the lighting of great public buildings an important part of city branding, for example) and much of what constitutes the civil governance of cities (crime, safety and security) takes light as the fundemental basic requirement. Moreover, as part of creative industry, manufacture and maintenance, lighting is a major economic sector. At the same time, the ecological costs of our energy consumption are also hotly debated and are consequently framed within political discourse and public policy, as new lighting technologies and EU regulations attempt to create sustainable energies. In addition, light (and its absence - darkness) are critical to our health, as for example in the regulation of sleep, mood and well-being and can entail significant health reactions if not properly regulated (as highlighted by the case of SAD and by increasing concerns with light pollution. These debates and issues are the broader social context for our seminar series, 'Configuring Light/Staging the Social', which aims to forge an intergrated dialogue between social sciences, design, architecture and urban planning focused on this most fundamental feature of social life. Surprising, given the importance of light as outlined above, there has been little integrated thinking and research on light. While it is a central concern to technicians, architects, engineers or designers and some policy makers, it has largely been ignored or little researched within the social sciences. While it would be seem important to draw academic attention to this most critical social material, practitioners' technical and design knowledge would also benefit from a more rigorous understanding of the social and cultural aspects and impact of their practice. However, thus far, little dialogue has taken place across these different disciplines and between academics and practitioners. Our seminar series aims to both address the gap in social science knowledge about light and put if firmly on the academic agenda within disciplines such as sociology, geography and anthropology, for example; while at the same time to bridge the divide between academic knolwedge and the technical and design knowledge of light engineers, architects and designers and urban planners. This dialogue between social science and practitioners should have considerable impact: our aim is to produce both knowledges and methodologies for better researching the ways in which light is configured and the roles it plays in structuring social life and it is envisaged that these new ways of thinking and working with light will directly impact on those practitioners in indusry and urban planning.