Friday 15 March 2013

Starry Night in The Electric City

When we think about beautiful night sceneries of the world’s greatest cities, from Tokyo to New York, we normally conceive of built surrounding pictures which we impressed – glittering cities’ auras from the landmark buildings and the colorful lighting that fills in the dark sky. 

According to Dave Lee, writing in “The Technology That Could 'Revolutionise' How We Light The World”, the technology has introduced us to illuminating culture. However, we need to concern about the downsides which usually go hand in hand when we have a great time.

These days, light has become progressively more used for creating atmosphere. Famous nightlife attractions appear to light the bottoms of clouds to appeal visitors. Particularly, the international festivals in many countries around the world, such as Christmas and New Years Eve are decorated with dazzling light displays. Also, restaurants, hotels, museums or even residences are illuminated with sparking fake stars. It has contributed to new professions, namely lighting designer and technical specialists . Today’s cutting-edge technology combined with well designs can stage the exceptional events more than ever.

Lighting design is one of my favorite subjects when I studied at the university. I like the process of thinking of light in three dimensions (except lighting calculation). I also amazed by how space and place can be influenced by the light presented. Not only is it a natural light but also an artificial light – a fantastic form of an elegant brightness. Moreover, both of them are fundamental components to visualisation, which have impacts on the way people perceive. They allow us to define all things around. In particular, the presence and the absence of light can amazingly change the visibility and the atmosphere.

To illustrate, Chinatown (or Yaowarat Road in Bangkok) is a popular place among local and foreigner tourists, especially foodstuffs. In daylight, there is a centre of gold trading in Thailand alongside many restaurants and gadget shops. Although traffic and commercial cause noise and air pollution, there is still be an attractively vibrant area. At night, there are full of street food. T
he streets are lightened up with big neon advertisements and signs, mainly red background with yellow Chinese alphabets that direct people to places. They provide the energetical and lively sense of area. The activities between day and night might not so different. But the altering of colors in the sky and the ambience of place can influence one's visual experience and moods.

It’s sound pretty terrific but it’s still hard for me to imagine the cost of electricity that the country has to spend in each month. However, it isn't a serious matter as long as they are not misused and cause light pollution. 


And perhaps, if we switched off all the lights in our city, we would see several phenomenal stars that have always been over our heads.
__________

Reference
Lee, D. (2013, March 15)The technology that could 'revolutionise' how we light the world. BBC News Business. Retrieved March 15, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21790465

4 comments:

  1. In Thailand, there are many light polluted spots beside roads such as advertisements cutout, big screen which they come from using very bright lights to get some attraction in wrong way,for example, people normally use light bulb at the front of cars to project ahead way when they drive cars at night. However, some people change the color of the bulb which normally is warm color to other color such as pink, white and blue colors for decorating their cars.These abnormal colors can cause other people get temporally blindness for seconds which this can result in many car crash accidents on the road.

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  2. I am very impressed to know that there are such professions as a light designer and technical specialist.

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  3. I agree with you that if we turn off the lights in our city, we will see more stars.
    From astronomy class, I learned that in such big city, we can see only few stars due to light pollution, whereas in small city or countryside, we can see 6,000 stars scattering on our skies. The less light pollution, the more number of stars we can observe. Light pollution is one of major obstacles for astronomical observations.

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  4. Light is one of the important components in many festivals or ceremonies such as New Year Celebration, King's birthday or Wedding Ceremony. Light can be used in many aspects and it expresses the different feeling, so Lighting design is such an interesting subject. In many big cities, the light in the night is fascinated such as Tokyo, Las Vegus, New York and Hong Kong. This attracts many tourist around the world to impress the night life.

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