A technological sensorium: Employing environmental sensors and creative data visualisation to engage public discourse on artificial light at night

This paper investigates how unattended environmental sensors and creative data visualization can engage public discourse on artificial light at night, with a particular focus on the interrelation of human, non-human, and technological agents, actants, and processes. The study focuses on three projects, one in a rural site and two in urban sites: Sensing the Luminous Night: Innovations in Capturing and Communicating Observations of Light Pollution in an Area of Natural Beauty in Leighton Moss RSPB nature reserve in the northwest of England; Slough Digital Urban Forest in Slough in the southeast of England; and Re-wilding the Night: Co-designing New Engagements with Urban Darkness in Bonn Botanical Gardens, Germany. These projects designed and employed environmental light sensors and visualisations along with all-sky cameras to develop imaginaries of night-time environments as more-than-human ecologies. The sensors, designed with both a functional and aesthetic sensibility, capture variations in light and other environmental parameters throughout the day and night to highlight the complex interplay of natural and artificial light at night. Working with public facing environmental organisations, the paper takes an experimental approach to public engagement that both foregrounds and critiques aesthetics and digital technologies. The concept of unwieldiness is introduced, emerging from the development and deployment of sensors, to explore the complex entwinement of human intent, technology, and the environment. A multivalent framework is proposed that integrates anthropo-, techno-, bio-, eco, and cosmocentric perspectives. Through aesthetic and time-based observations facilitated by sensors, the projects aim to imaginatively situate participants within nested spatial and temporal scales, creating attentiveness and attunement to more-than-human perspectives.