Light and the Manifestation of Performance Place: The Experience of Spaces and Places Through a Different Light.

Winton, Euan M M

Abstract

Through the practice-based lens of the Night in the Garden at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (2014) this paper explores how environments, both built and green, can become something powerfully augmented in the regeneration of cities and towns, and introduces the human experience of unexpected events as an affordance of access and belonging. In the last two decades the explosion of the ‘light festival’ as a global phenomenon has created a new night-time language of temporary performance. Our urban environments are straining to develop unique visual representations that have driven a new kind of tourism. The alien performances that play out across our urban centres bring a return to the joy of the unique and the carnivalesque and are situated within the environments that we recognise so differently during the day. This creative practice led perspective, supported exploration of audience engagement and asked questions of how personal and shared experiences are generated and broadcast; whilst recognising this approach as part of a wider place-making phenomena, where visual culture awakens sleeping spaces. The urban domain is a canvas for storytelling open to change each time the festival rolls into town, where physical structures remain unaltered, but our perception of them becomes reanimated.

Citation

Winton, E. M. M. (2016). Light and the Manifestation of Performance Place: The Experience of Spaces and Places Through a Different Light. Spaces and Flows: An International Journal of Urban and ExtraUrban Studies, 8(2), 31-43. https://doi.org/10.18848/2154-8676/CGP/v08i02/31-43

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 7, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Dec 28, 2016
• Publication Date: 2016
• Deposit Date: May 11, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 22, 2019
• Journal: Spaces and Flows: An international Journal of Urban and ExtraUrban Studies
• Print ISSN: 2154-8676
• Electronic ISSN: 2154-8684
• Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 31-43
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.18848/2154-8676/CGP/v08i02/31-43
• Keywords: Spaces; Urban; place-making
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/10143