After Dark: How we Respond to Darkness

天黑后:我们如何应对黑暗

The Forum

社会与文化

2016-05-23

40 分钟
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Dr Janina Ramirez explores our relationship with, and attitudes to, darkness and the night. From the beginning of humanity when night was a time to sleep and hide from predators, over millennia the night and darkness has gathered a multitude of myths and cultural references all around the world and is something we can exploit, or something we might fear. Dr Janina Ramirez examines the human perspective of the dark, from night vision technology to Norwegian forest myths. Dr Ravindra Athale, of the Office of Naval Research in Arlington USA, an expert on night vision technology, who examines how nocturnal animals help high tech, and how our ability to see at night has affected the way we use the dark to conceal and surprise. Professor John Bowen from the University of York in the UK, an expert on Gothic literature and its roots. Erland Loe, the celebrated Norwegian author, who explores his own and fellow Norwegian’s response to long dark winter nights. Noam Elcott, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Media at Columbia University in the USA who discusses the literal and metaphorical use of dark and night in film art and the dark room. (Photo: An artist's Illustration of a haunted forest. Credit: Shan Pillay)
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  • Hello and welcome to the forum with me, Yannina Ramirez.

  • Today, we'll be discussing our attitudes to and feelings about the dark,

  • how we operate at night, and what our latest understanding is of seeing and working in the dark.

  • We'll be covering everything from night vision technology to darkness in art and literature.

  • In Bram Stoker's Dracula, Van Helsing says to Mina,

  • there are darknesses in life and there are lights.

  • You are one of the lights.

  • Surely darkness is about the absence of light,

  • that dichotomy between good and evil, love and hatred, harmony and disorder.

  • But what I want to explore is whether there is value in looking at what darkness means off itself,

  • Gothic, sublime, unconscious, uncanny.

  • Darkness has many associations.