Moonrise behind Lanyon Quoit, Penzance Cornwall, 2021
I was on a Fulbright Scholar Award in the UK for the academic year 2021/2022 and will be continuing to research and realize the project now that I have returned to the U.S.
Our Disappearing Darkness and Recreating True Night
Recent archeological evidence has suggested that Neolithic people were likely experiencing some of the megalithic sites in Cornwall at night. I will be recreating the experience of night at these prehistoric sites through an immersive installation that will utilize, among other elements, photographs that I created over the past year. Present-day people are forced by rampant light pollution to live with constant intrustions of artificial light into their experience of night and darkness. I want to return to modern-day humans an embodied experience of darkness—the awe-inspiring, fear-inducing, and uncanny experience of darkness and night in which we all evolved and to which we are all entitled.
A Fulbright Scholar Award for the 2021/2022 academic year made undertaking this ambitious project possible by sponsoring my living in Cornwall and collaborating with Dr. Kevin Gaston of the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute. Dr. Andy Jones of the Cornwall Archaeological Unit and archeoastronomer Carolyn Kennett were also invaluable guides in pursuing this work.
More detail here