Dark Sense

The domestication of the night through the widespread expansion of artificial illumination has transformed urban experiences of the night. The examination of the round-the-clock operating port of Rotterdam and its expansion, Maasvlakte 2, that promotes itself with combining industry with nature conservation, demonstrates how politics normalizes and economically legitimizes environmental pollutants like light pollution. Light pollution is a pervasive yet ignored interference of human activities on nature, affecting nocturnal flora and fauna, disrupting natural day-night rhythms, veiling star-saturated night skies, and wasting vast amounts of energy.

To reflect on what is lost through the intensification of social and economic activities into the night, Dark Sense explores the distinctive qualities of darkness by creating an immersive experience that is legible beyond the visual. We think and create space in relation to our sense of vision, but disregard the immersive qualities of other senses capable of interpreting spatial signifiers.

Dark Sense is a tactile, wearable microhabitat that heightens other sensory perceptions. It fosters an inverse translation process that mediates between external material stimuli and the immaterial inner imaginations and spatial interpretations they evoke. Experiencing darkness means facing inwards through the disappearance of the exterior.