Speed of Light

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LANDSCAPISMATTHESPEEDOFLIGHT:DARKNESSANDILLUMINATIONINMOTIONARTICLEinGEOGRAFISKAANNALERSERIESBHUMANGEOGRAPHYMARCH2015ImpactFactor:0.61DOI:10.1111/geob.12062

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LANDSCAPISM AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

The authors 2015Geografiska Annaler: Series B 2015 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography

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LANDSCAPISM AT THE Speed of Light: DArkNESS AND ILLuMINATION IN MOTION

byTim Edensor and Hayden Lorimer

EDENSOR, T. and LORIMER, H. (2015): Landscapism at the Speed of Light: darkness and illumination in motion, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 97 (1): 116.

ABSTRACT. In conditions of darkness, how is landscape experi-enced when mediated by the artful staging of mass movement and artificial illumination? The article offers a response to this ques-tion of perception, phenomena and sensation, through cultural-ly informed consideration of Speed of Light, a performance event staged in Holyrood Park, produced by arts charity NVA, during the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival. Speed of Light was a large-scale, open-air public artwork, illuminating the form and motion of walkers and runners, fusing the role of performer and spectator. Following an introduction to the events design and delivery, and consideration of recent literatures on spaces of darkness and the il-lumination of landscape in contemporary social life, the authors de-scribe and explain their respective roles as participating walker and runner in Speed of Light, and offer a series of participant-informed interpretations. Observations arising from the social experience of darkness, illumination and motion, lead to closing reflections on what is termed landscapism. Landscapism, a sensibility encap-sulated in Speed of Light, is suggested as a transporting and en-chanting affect achieved by estranging the expected encounter with topography and atmosphere. It is a staged sensibility that dramatiz-es the experience of looking at, listening to and feeling for the tem-porary transformation of landscape.

Keywords: landscape, event, darkness, illumination, motion

IntroductionIn this article, we consider the question of land-scapes appearance, with moving bodies in varying conditions of darkness and illumination. Our inten-tion is to extend and advance recent disciplinary thinking about landscape-as-milieu, where experi-ence, encounter, sensation, perception, atmosphere and affect are fields of intellectual inquiry and ar-tistic experiment (Wylie 2005, 2008; Lorimer and Wylie 2010; McCormack 2010a). To ground these concerns with landscape theory, we reflect upon per-sonal involvement variously figured as individ-ual, shared and socialized as two different sorts of participant in Speed of Light, a mass performance event produced by Glasgow-based arts charity NVA, across 19 nights during the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival. Speed of Light (SoL) was one of four cultural projects commissioned by the Legacy Trust UKs Community Celebrations

Programme (funded by the National Lottery and ty-ing in with the London Olympic and Paralympic Games). It was staged in Holyrood Park and shaped around the striking basalt cliffs of Salisbury Crags, and Arthurs Seat, the highest peak in a group of hills that dominate Edinburghs panoramic skyline (BBC Scotland 2012). Written from the perspective of active participa-tion one author walking (Tim), the other author run-ning (Hayden) our critical responses to this unique land-artwork focus initially on the experience of in situ involvement as something generative of the principle phenomena to be observed in SoL (namely motion, darkness and illumination). We then explore the ways in which this landscape-responsive event can sharpen thinking about the embodied experi-ence of nocturnal landscapes and atmospheres, dif-ferentially darkened and illuminated. Specifically, we explain how the production of this kinetic cul-tural spectacle depended on the carefully choreo-graphed staging of artificial light effects, produced by partially illuminated bodies moving in conditions of darkness. In conclusion, we suggest that SoL is an event exemplary of contemporary trends in the cul-tural economy, where practice-based experimental-ism and creative arts performances produce forms of landscapism. The term is intended to capture the transporting and enchanting affects that result from estranging the encounter with topography, terrain and atmosphere. Landscapism, we suggest, drama-tizes the experience of looking, listening and feel-ing. It is a quality of experience and appreciation, that can be enacted as much as installed in place, and that can wax and wane as event participants feel themselves a part of the phenomena to which they are simultaneously bearing witness. Before dealing with these matters of artistic de-sign or aesthetic intention that shaped the perfor-mance of SoL, a summary account of the logistics necessary for the event to take place underscores the complexity of the landscape event as a technical exercise. Operating on a grand scale, staged twice nightly, performances required a twelve-strong

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event production team to manage a programme through which groups were choreographed, sched-uled and channelled to move around the challenging and varied terrain of the park landscape according to timed routes and set patterns. The dramatic vis-ual effect given to physical motion en masse was made possible through the innovative use of dif-fering lighting technologies harnessed to the mov-ing bodies of walking and running participants. Volunteer runners were clad in light suits (see Fig. 1).1 Specially designed as a flexible exoskeleton, the lightweight suit combined head-to-ankle velcro strapping, and a system of LEDs strung along the arms and legs. A wireless DMX control system was the suits final technical component, giving the SoL choreography team individualized control of light colours, intensity and strobe frequency on runners suits. Once on the move, and illuminated, the runner was transformed into a moving stick-figure Fee-paying audience members, who walked while taking in the surrounding spectacle, were each equipped

with a walking staff that emitted a soft-toned lumi-nescent glow from its base, and gave off thin sparks of light from its top whenever making contact with the ground. For the full festival season, SoL recruited 4000 participating volunteer runners, including 24 lead runners who were continuously involved. Runners ranged widely in terms of ability, age and experi-ence; although each volunteer was required to pro-vide information on personal running history to enable screening and profiling during the recruit-ment process. Some run leaders were highly expe-rienced endurance athletes. Participant performers covered a wide spectrum from experienced club athletes and regular hill runners, to occasional jog-gers and relative novices. Each nightly performance comprised two different groups of approximately 150 runners, and five separate walking parties (each numbering about fifty accompanied by three guides) who departed a base camp at 15-minute intervals. Walking parties then followed a two-mile set route, including staged stopping-points, eventually climb-ing to the summit of Arthurs Seat (251 metres above sea level). Respectively, walkers and runners experienced the performance event in very different ways. All involved took up a romantic invitation, to trip the light fantastic; or, in the words of the song made famous by Scots music hall performer Harry Lauder, to go roamin in the gloamin (Lorimer 2012a). Since its opening season in Edinburgh, ver-sions of SoL have been designed for, and staged in, the dense built environment of Yokohama, Japan, the environmentally remediated Emscher Landschaftspark in the Ruhr, Germany, and the re-generated Media City at Salford Quays, England. These contrasting urban, post-industrial spaces pro-duced very different effects to those of the moun-tain landscape in miniature found in Holyrood; a functional urban dark park, albeit without any official designation. Accordingly, it is vital to ac-knowledge that by design SoL was directly respon-sive to the landscape in which it was performed. In Edinburgh, the sheer physicality of the setting was a principle design consideration. Arthurs Seat is a remnant plug of a long-since extinct Carboniferous volcanic system, shaped into its crenellated form by a Quaternary glacier moving from west to east, leav-ing a tail of raised land, tilting to the east, as well as the cliffside of Salisbury Crags. Besides this deep geophysical past, Holyrood is a landscape known according to local legends

Figure 1. Leo Sho-Silva, Speed of Light run leader, in light-suit.Source: NVA.



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and historical events; one sobriquet for the princi-ple peaks being Resting Giant. These encompass archaeological discoveries, royal hunting excur-sions, military training exercises, industrial quar-rying, murder and suicide, witchcraft, pilgrimages to holy wells and the presence of supernatural por-tals to Arthurian worlds. The stories were retold and explained in a book drawing inspiration from NVAs production of SoL (McHardy and Smith 2012). There are thus multiple natural and human histories, symbolic qualities and entangled path-ways (Ingold 2004) that thread through the park landscape, and the tracks upon which participants walked and ran respectively. It is unusual for peo-ple to explore Holyrood Park after nightfall; clos-ing time revellers and early hour ravers apart. It is a green space, like most other recreational landscapes, that has been written about and represented as it ap-pears by day.

Shedding light on darknessWhen dark landscapes are considered, they are com-monly related to negative experience and imagery. Since medieval times, darkness has symbolized pa-gan obscurantism deviancy, monstrosity, diab-olism (Galinier et al. 2010, p. 820), and a gloomy landscape might seem to contain a host of malign and insubstantial entities conjured up by ghost stories, folk beliefs and religiously inspired terrors. These superstitious and religious associations of darkness with devilry have been overlain by the values of the Enlightenment, and the passage from the gloomy fog of medieval ignorance to the pursuit of visible truth, purity, revelation and knowledge (Bille and Srensen 2007, p. 272). Though the arrival of elec-tric illumination partly overcame the unseen terrors of the night, the dark has also continued to serve as a cloak for alternative and oppositional practices that threaten to deterritorialize the rationalizing or-der of society (Williams 2008, p. 518). For night is the time for daylights dispossessed the deviant, the dissident, the different (Palmer 2000, pp. 1617), for clandestine, revolutionary and conspiratorial activities that challenge daytime practices of com-merce and regulation. And though often feared, dark-ness can also symbolize alternative systems of value: excitement, mystery, imagination and desire. Indeed, recently, cultural practices have emerged that are attracted to darkness as a positive attribute, and this has been accompanied by theoretical ac-counts that have attempted to explore the ways in

which darkness might be sought as a condition in which to experience mystery, enhanced non-visual sensations and the night sky (Edensor 2015). Attlee (2011) laments the contemporary loss of the ex-perience of moonlight, while Vannini and Taggart (forthcoming) has demonstrated how Canadian off-gridders embrace darkness as they move towards more sustainable forms of living. Shaw (forthcom-ing) discusses how in the home, darkness may be threatening but also possesses the capacity to en-courage openness to otherness, Welton (2012) dem-onstrates how darkness can be deployed in theatres to enhance dramatic tension, and Steidle and Werth (2013) explore how darkness can stimulate creativ-ity. Edensor and Falconer (forthcoming) investigate how dining in the dark promotes conviviality, sen-sory experimentation and intimacy, and Gallan and Gibson (2011, p. 2514) also contend that darkness might be reconsidered as a conduit for new forms of conviviality and camaraderie. In this article, we contribute to this reconsider-ation of darkness in seeking to reappraise the qual-ities of the nocturnal landscape. Contemplation of how we see with the landscape generally conjures up a daylit expanse across which we shift our gaze between the near, middle and far distance, picking out impediments, attractions and characteristic fea-tures while charting the way ahead. This chimes with the widespread implicit assumption that land-scape equates to a daylit realm: as Jakle (2001, p. vii) notes, landscape has been conceptualized pri-marily in terms of daytime use, thereby neglecting nocturnal apprehensions of space. For sighted peo-ple, light is the experience of inhabiting the world of the visible, and its qualities of brilliance and shade, tint and colour, and saturation (Ingold 2011, p. 128). The landscape that we see is thus the chang-ing light that continuously falls upon it, and as such, constitutes the materialities and sensibilities with which we see (Rose and Wylie 2006, p. 478). Darkness is an ever-changing quality, shifting in relation to perception, light and the spaces in which it is apprehended. As Nina Morris (2011, p. 316) points out, darkness is situated, partial and rela-tional, with our capacity to see shaped by the shift-ing levels of darkness and the intensity of light that permeates the gloom. To elaborate, the perception of landscape at night changes as eyes adapt and as we become attuned to the different levels of light that emerge (Lingis 1994). These levels vary according to diffusion and brightness, shadow and cloud cover, the presence of artificial illumination, seasonal and



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climatic variations, the diurnal cycle, phases of the moon, and the kinds of illumination we may employ to guide our way or be seen by others. This percep-tion partly depends upon the facilities of the human eye. The light-sensitive receptors on the retina are of two kinds, cones and rods, which respond to dif-ferent wavelengths of light and produce two differ-ent forms of vision. The rods operate in low levels of light and thus shape our visual apprehension of dark-ness. The eyes become more sensitive to light, shape and movement but the ability to discern colour is impaired. Moreover, during daylight, human vision generally scans when encountering a landscape. The eye does not look at things but roams among them, observes Ingold (2011, p. 132), finding a way through rather than aiming for a fixed target. Yet in the darkness, small patches of light in an oth-erwise dark landscape, or contrastingly brightly lit areas, usually serve to focus vision far more acutely than in the daylight where a landscape comprised of textural detail is liable to draw and distract the eye away from targeted attention (Edensor 2013). These levels of dark and light provoke affective and emo-tional resonances, cajoling bodies into movement, activating passions, charging the imagination, insti-gating sensual pleasures and discomforts. The inter-play of light and dark was a key design element in SoL. The moving points of light in the dark space of the park, and the contrasting glare of the surround-ing city became key features of the experience of the landscape during the staging of the event. Seeing involves movement, intention, memory, and imagination, as Hannah Macpherson (2009, p. 1049) observes, highlighting how the moving body is attuned to space by more than what is directly per-ceived by the eyes. Robert Macfarlane (2005, p. 75) claims that the sensorium is transformed in the dark as other types of vision assert themselves: sonic, ol-factory, tactile, memorious and one becomes more aware of landscape as a medley of effects. A min-gling of geology, memory, nature, movement. For Tallmadge (2008, p. 140) by attuning to landscape through other senses, the body potentially relaxes, opens, breathes, extends its attention outward into the world the way a plant feels its way into the soil with roots or into the air with leaves. Macfarlane (2005, p. 75) further contends that in the dark, land-forms exist as presences: inferred, less substantial but more powerful for it. In a mountain landscape, we may become aware of moving through the depths of time as well as physical space, where human and geological history press upon us and we

imaginatively sense its shapes and intuit the forces which have brought it into being: ice, fire and wa-ter, with incredible slowness and unimaginable force (Macfarlane 2005, p. 76). In Holyrood Park, the geophysical processes that have shaped the land-scape over millennia could be sensed, in the absence of diverting visual stimuli. The dramatizing of light and dark in SoL al-lows us to consider at length how the experience of gloom allows us to reappraise darkness and argu-ments about the ceaseless expansion of illumination in contemporary life (see Fig. 2). A discussion of the distinctive visual and non-visual apprehension of this specific nocturnal landscape, the experience of running and walking through the dark, and the imaginative upsurges produced through confront-ing forms of gloomy space will supplement and ex-tend the earlier work of Morris (2011) and Edensor (2013). Prior to this, we provide a brief description of the methodological approach taken to studying SoL as a mass performance event-in-motion.

Methodological approach for the study of a mass performance eventThe approach taken to studying sensation, participa-tion and spectacle in SoL was shaped by the events specific character: one that was transient, mobile and collectively accomplished. While existing method-ologies for fieldwork on foot were partly instructive (Ingold and Vergunst 2008), studying a mass perfor-mance event raised different sorts of methodologi-cal challenge, and produced our adaptive response. To aid explanation, it is helpful to offer additional back-stage context on the event. Volunteer runner performers came together as a group two hours in advance of the scheduled event for, variously, a motivational talk; instruction on run choreography and wardrobe fitting; some so-cializing over nutritious energy snacks; then finally, stretching, warm-up and group bonding. Following the performance, given the lateness of the hour, run-ners dispersed for home (and sleep) very soon after the return of light suits and gathering up personal be-longings. Meanwhile, participating walker perform-ers gathered as a group only thirty minutes before setting out, then parted company immediately upon their safe return to the tented village that served as event base. The nature of pre-event and post-event activities closed off opportunities for participants to provide anticipative and reflective comments. This unusually delimited social situation was less



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problematic than might be imagined since individual identities (paired with subjective responses to em-bodied experience) were not primary to our research concerns. Rather, our interest lay in gathering up re-sponsive voices and suggestive utterances as crowd-sourced material, arising from within the very midst of performance. By these means, we identified re-curring themes of appearance, experience, percep-tion and affect. Moreover, during a performance wholly dependent on motion and flux, taking place in conditions of near-darkness, compiling a subject-centred account of event experience would have been practically problematic. Instead, we elected to work creatively with the form of anonymized com-munication that is most faithful to the events occur-rence. The soundtrack of SoL comprised snatches of talk, heard as disembodied voices, delivered by un-identified bodies. Mid-performance, en route, quick words served as operative shorthand. Sayings of all sorts hung in the night air; muffled words, some tail-ing away incompletely, others magically thrown from afar, or coming over crystal clear for all to hear. Feelings and directions were exchanged when

paths crossed, or thrown over shoulders in no-ones particular direction. By turns plain, declarative, lyr-ical, economical, instructional, we heard sayings of all sorts, some with the irresistible appeal of a soundbite. Useful methodological comparisons might here be drawn with contemporary social formations such as a flashmob, silent-disco or street protest; all are trans-personal events, simultaneously organized and emergent, where the self can be left behind, and the socio-spatialities of what will happen is unknown in advance (McCormack 2010b). This event-driven, participant-informed methodology also encom-passed a significant auto-ethnographic dimension, with the event treated as an immersive phenome-non, where our understanding benefitted from sus-tained, and repeat participation.2 Comparisons could be drawn between the overheard responses of anon-ymous participants and our own event experience as participating walker and runner. Since we crossed paths, literally, with so many other event partici-pants, the eclecticism and variety of voices repre-sented is guaranteed.

Figure 2. Speed of Light, twilight performance with walkers (foreground) and runners (background).Source: NVA.



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WalkingAs a form of embodied knowledge, walking is ge-ographically and historically differentiated, re-producing meaningful relationships between pedestrians and the kinds of places, spaces and landscapes through which they travel. Moreover, walking often normalizes particular ways of sens-ing, understanding and performing place (Edensor 2000). Accordingly, particular kinds of space are deemed suitable for specific forms of walking prac-tice. As Kay and Moxham (1996) point out, there are numerous forms of walking, ranging from saunter-ing, promenading and wandering to marching and trekking. Each mode can be understood as an em-bodiment of particular social values (championing health; finding virtue in escaping the urban; and, an associated delight taken in a romantic consumption of the rural). Each uses particular equipment and clothing, designed to suit, or meet the challenges posed by, particular kinds of places and landscapes. Hillwalking in Holyrood Park is a popular pursuit for locals and visitors alike, shaped by the urge to exercise in the open air, or motivated by a roman-tic desire to gaze contemplatively upon scenic pros-pects from an elevated vantage point, while still in the heart of the city. SoL took place within this broader cultural and geographical context. In spirit, the event finds cer-tain kinds of rapport with other creative walking practices produced by artists (see Pink et al. 2010; Pinder 2011; Heddon and Turner 2012), includ-ing the celebrated prose and material recordings of walks of Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, the ex-plorations of pedestrian rhythms by Francis Alys, the audio and video walks of Janet Cardiff, the per-formative excursions of Tim Brennan, and the psy-chogeographical practices of Sophie Calle and Francesco Careri. In comparison to these works, SoL was carefully staged by NVA to invite broad public participation in, and experience of the work, while ensuring an immersive quality. In SoL the ear-liest leg of the walk took place in twilight, a nocturne with darkness gradually falling. This experience of making an approach into the event charged the jour-ney with anticipation, affording the park an aura of expectancy. The walk was designed to be deliberate, collective and linear, following a prescribed route along a narrow valley before sharply ascending to the peak of Arthurs Seat and returning to base camp by a more gradual descent. Even though it involved an ascent, the walk resisted cultural tropes of heroic, individualist achievement, instead promoting the

attentiveness and mindfulness made possible by a slowing in pace (Pink 2008). If when walking the senses are integrated by the way the living body moves (Lund 2006, p. 41), then the affordances of different topography and ter-rain push bodies into walking in a particular way (Degen and Rose 2012). Walking in unlit spaces, across hills, through woods and over rough terrain has become unfamiliar for most people. In dark-ening conditions, there was little scope for drifting from the path, and as the party of walkers entered the gloom of the Hunters Bog, habituated ways of mov-ing were replaced by tentative footfalls and a strain-ing effort to perceive what was out there. Walking with others generally imposes a particular rhythm on the party, especially when observing the convention of moving at the pace of the slowest participant, and for SoL, a diverse range of walking abilities shaped by age, ability and fitness typified each partys com-position. In the dark, pedestrian solidarity produced an especially deliberate tempo. Pace was also regu-lated by the guides, and organized in response to the groups ahead and behind, ensuring that gaps in be-tween were maintained. In such a formation, the walker takes very lit-tle responsibility for making her own path. Because each person in the single file was equipped with a walking staff, individual movement was eased to-wards a shared posture and gait (defamiliarizing so-matic movement, for instance in preventing the easy swing of the arms) and provoking new experiences of downward pressure, focusing on unnoticed fea-tures, perceptions and sensations. The slow climb to the viewing station at the top of a steep, zigzag path encouraged walkers to take greater care, peer-ing downwards at the rocky steps so as not to lose footing or balance. We had to become attuned to the capabilities of different bodies as they ascended, an-ticipate their progress and prepare to follow on up the incline. Surfaces and slopes became readable through enhanced tactile sense, fostering a relation-ship with space that was practical and focused, in-volving concentration on scanning and feeling the line of the path, and the continuously changing tex-tures of the ground underfoot (Welton 2012). Before turning to the non-visual apprehension of the park created by the walk, it is valuable to note how the qualities of light and dark were perceived visually. Upon entering Hunters Bog, the steep-sided relief blocked out much of the ambient glow of the surrounding city. Until encountering the runners in their light suits, there was little distinguishable



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from the dark mass of the valley sides. To walk the same route in daylight offers plentiful opportunities for eyes to rove across variegated textures, shapes, features and undulations of the land extending either side of the path. But in the pitch of blackness there was little to fix the gaze upon, and even as our eyes adjusted to night vision, no trustworthy sense of dis-tance emerged, beyond the horizon of the darken-ing sky. The blurring of the bodys limits with the surrounding space, and the lack of any receding vista denied the familiar habit of panoramic gaz-ing through which landscape becomes object. Yet this focus on space would change as the walk pro-gressed. The route was cleverly devised to elicit ex-perience of this Stygian darkness but then draw out a contrast with illuminated space as the exclusively dark landscape was flooded by the dramatic view of the city at night. Urry (2007, p. 48) has noted how particular tech-nologies facilitate movement through place as they sensuously extend human capacities into and across the external world. Night walking in dark areas gen-erally involves some aid to vision in the form of a torch or flashlight. In SoL no torches were supplied, or permitted. Instead walkers were equipped with a specially designed walking staff that transformed

apprehension of dark spaces close at hand (see Fig. 3). The staff had two distinctive features: an illumi-nated tube at its base, and a motion generated light at its apex that briefly flashed when struck on the ground. The tube had the strange but practical ef-fect of illuminating the boots of walkers and the sur-faces walked upon. This personalized pool of light invited greater levels of attention to, even absorption with, the ground beneath our feet, and the sculptural forms of rock strata, scree beds, vegetation and other physical features lining the path. In late summer, yellow ragwort grows abundant in Holyrood Park, and by day forms an attractive colour filter for the panoramic scenery. By night, in the light cast by the staff, its vibrancy was transformed into a pale grey monotone, its textures and shapes delicately illumi-nated, standing proud from its surroundings in a way that cannot easily be experienced in daylight. Other plants (heather, grasses, gorse, lichens and mosses) assumed comparable shapely individual form once illuminated in the darkness. The motion-triggered staff light also cre-ated a different experience of generating illumina-tion. Utilizing the kinetic energy of each walkers movements via a tiny Faraday coil, the energy ex-pended by participants took its expression in light.

Figure 3. Walkers carrying glow-staffs, ascending Arthurs Seat.Source: NVA.



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On rockier and steeper ground, the staff served as an aid to balance and ascending, the need to strike it on the ground producing a burst of light one or two feet away from the eyes. These flashes provided a sud-den haze of luminosity, sometimes proving briefly disruptive by altering perception of surroundings from close quarters to features at a greater distance. On reaching the summit, walkers were directed to disconnect this flashing apparatus from the staff top and add it to a gathering mound, as a light and sound sculpture adjacent to the cairn, testifying to the col-lective production of the spectacle. In parallel with ocular experiences of illumi-nated walking, the space of darkness also stimulated other sensuous apprehensions, rendering the unre-markable somehow more notable: fragrances of soil and gorse carried on the night air, fusing with body odours and the aroma of the boiled sweets being sucked by members of the party; a feeling for wind currents, and transition into pockets of stiller air of-fered by sheltered ground. While the exercise of the walk did foreground the mobile body, there were moments of stillness too: in pauses to catch breath; to ensure a sufficient gap was kept between walking groups; a brief wait at the bottom of the incline to the summit; and, the respite at the summit viewpoint. All involved a slowing and stilling of the sensorium. This staging of stillness was significant, highlight-ing how accounts of the animated mobile subject can overlook sporadic lapses into embodied, inac-tivity and the felt-world of shifting between states of motion and stillness (Bissell and Fuller 2011). A further sensory effect of darkness is the en-hanced experience of sound, and how it lends in-tricate texture to experience giving a tonal variety to movement (Lorimer and Wylie 2010, p. 7). As walkers concentrated their efforts on the upslope, the sounds of working bodies (grunts and gasps, the creaking of knees, stomach rumbles, the scuffs, thuds and scrapes made by boots) eclipsed other noises. Occasional rustles in the grass or faint cries suggested other forms of park life. The presence of some came unannounced, from out of the dark-ness: slugs, assuming grotesque proportions on the path, and the bats, moths and other winged flying insects circling the summit beacon, presences that provided a profound sense of the vitality of this noc-turnal landscape. Approaching the high point, where walkers stopped to view the spectacle of the run-ners in the valley below, attention to sound took on a more contemplative quality. The gentle buffeting of the wind was supplemented by the sounds of the

city, a low murmur occasionally punctured by the noises of emergency vehicles, faint shouts of revel-lers and distant strains of music. However, once the summit was reached, the function of the mysterious black bags attached to the walking staffs became ap-parent. Gentle, wavering electronic harmonics were emitted, at first a low electric hum, then oscillating between different pitches and collectively forming a changing symphony that added an uncanny dimen-sion to our presence on the summit at night and con-templation of the runners movements below.

RunningThe emergence of SoL is both reflective, and consti-tutive, of the renewed cultural profile that has been afforded distance running in recent years. The popu-larity of recreational running has been rediscovered to a degree not seen since the original boom years of the 1970s and early 1980s. As a notable marker of interest, running has been the focus of recent crea-tive writing, styled variously as memoir, reportage, criticism and fiction (Eschenoz 2009; Murakami 2009; Lorimer 2010, 2012b; McDougall 2010; Jones 2011; Finn 2012; Whalley 2012). Recognition of running as a gathering cultural force offers a means to understand how health, fitness, wellbeing and goal attainment now exist as powerful aspira-tional models. Running today offers its most devo-tional tribal membership the promise of redemption. Pitched at a personal level and packing emotional punch, some of this literature identifies endurance athletes as cultural and biophysical curiosities wor-thy of portraiture, people with a perverse passion and a relationship with physical pain. These and other wide-ranging matters were addressed and de-bated by the SoL Investigations Panel at meetings held during the development phases of the project. Arguably the most striking thematic develop-ment between panel-based ideas and park-based ac-tivities was one that ultimately eschewed running as a form of extremist exercise, in favour of celebrat-ing ordinary levels of endurance and encouraging inclusive and fulfilling forms of public participation. Non-elite, endurance distance running was given added momentum in 2012. Though this was unmis-takably Londons Olympic year, the greater network of associated festivals and landmark events pro-grammed for the Cultural Olympiad across Britain enabled diverse expression of, and critical engage-ment with, a national, sporting heritage. In a summer defined by feats of highest, record-breaking athletic



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endeavour, cultural space was made for running to co-exist as an expressive, performance art. SoL channelled the industry of the individual runner into a mass performance of running artistry. However, if this was a stage for the ordinary runner, the act of running was given a very particular twist. Ordinarily, heading for a run when it is dark out-side means sticking to routes that are artificially il-luminated by overhead street lighting. In midwinter, when hours of daylight are shortest, the runners world glows sodium orange; the signature colour of the modern, nocturnal city. Though subdued in tone, the quality of light cast by street lamps is consist-ent enough to reveal surfaces underfoot: well-laid, dependable paving slabs; smooth tarmac or the ir-regularities of cobblestones; back lanes pitted with potholes and puddles; small slicks of dog shit to be skirted around. Such localized hazards aside, self-conscious efforts directed at eyefoot coordination are never much of an issue for the urban runner. But all this changes abruptly where the security offered by street lighting stops, in the darkness on the edge of town. Night running off-road is an unusual experi-ence for the great majority of runners. Few venture far into this beyond-world where your field of vi-sion reduces dramatically, and there is no guarantee of terra firma. In the gloom, everything about run-ning can seem less sure. Even in the light thrown by a full moon, feelings of vulnerability are palpa-ble, borne of not knowing with any real confidence what lies beneath or just ahead. Long strides shorten and stiffen to smaller steps, each the equivalent of a stab in the dark. Even on properly metalled surfaces, freer movements are pitched off balance by the ever-present worry of putting a foot wrong. Feet flap into places that they should not, clipping or brushing up against the out-stretched calf muscle of the trailing leg. Feelings of fluency deteriorate into a clutter of physical uncertainty. Running blindly and unaided is, of course, an extremists kind of experiment. Its more likely that any bout of adventurous off-road night running will happen with the help of a head torch, and the intense beam of light it throws out. It is with this half-world of travelling illumination, and enveloping darkness, that the participating runners in SoL had to quickly become acquainted. Mounted on the forehead, se-cured by an elasticated strap, aimed straight ahead and tilted slightly downward, a head-torch directs an intense beam of light to a distance of approximately 20 metres. The visual effect created was one of

continually moving through a sharply defined tunnel of visibility. By augmenting our limited human ca-pability to see in the dark, this small piece of equip-ment also caused notable shifts in runners style and habits. It fostered a state of hyper-vigilance, exhib-ited in tiny, quick repeated head movements. Bird-like, these continuous tilts, twitches and turns, were a result of the ongoing exercise of monitoring the ground to be encountered just a few paces ahead. In SoL, such attentiveness was made necessary by the variability of the terrain underfoot. The paths and tracks used to create patterns of choreographed running motion were scattered across a distinctive patch of the park. Shaped like an upturned half disc (set at a sloping angle of about 25 from the hori-zontal), its edge ends abruptly at the sheer side of Salisbury Crags. In daylight, several of these paths can be seen to a distance; many are well trod, used by walkers and runners for exercise and training. The pathways extend across ground of differing type: narrow and steeply inclining for short stretches; gently undulating elsewhere; sometimes uneven and tussocky, sometimes short-cropped grass; loose and scuffed rock offering good grip, or polished up and a bit more treacherous; dramatically exposed, where winding along the cliff edge; of a width suited for the passage of a single person, sometimes allowing for a pair travelling side by side; scrolling with the contours of the land, or making sharp cuts up and downhill. In the torchlight, advance knowledge of changes in terrain along any path taken was limited to the ground most immediately proximate. With aware-ness rendered more emergent than is ordinarily the case, runners had to adapt themselves to an exercise of part seeing and part feeling their way. The exer-cise of running always is a process of course, but in these unfamiliar conditions the sense of discov-ery was more intense, one where the felt world is continually emerging into being. Rhythmic move-ment commonly associated with the experience of running proved harder to find. The gait of fel-low runners seemed more agitated, strides liable to turn choppy, and body shapes more crunched, than is normal. In wet or showery weather, conditions underfoot turned greasy, making the going tricky enough that taken-for-granted aspects of running just staying upright became more contingent. In spite of best efforts at monitoring the ground ahead, differences in conditions underfoot could arrive by surprise, sometimes as the mild shock of a slip or stumble, occasionally as minor embarrassment, the



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cause of a tumbling, giggling pratfall. Darkness was also one cause of unexpectedly collectivized kinds of running experience. By common consensus, long-distance running is a sport most suited to those unafraid of the idea of loneliness, or who harbour a craving for alone time. Whether reflective or constitutive of this cultural condition, in the Olympic pantheon feats of running glory have been figured as quintessen-tially individualistic, and at the same time heroi-cally self-sacrificial. Meanwhile, in the world of mere mortals, on any given trot with friends or train-ing partners there will be plenty of chatter during the warm up. After that, conversation is likely to happen in snatches and bursts, punctuating longer stretches of comfortable, companionable quiet. Sociality emerges in silence. Among club runners, as the miles click by, verbal communication tends to gradually reduce to the perfunctory and functional. When physical effort and rivalry is ratcheted up, no one has the need or inclination to speak. At the sight of a tightly packed bunch running laps of the ath-letics track we expect to hear nothing but puffing and panting. Running differs markedly from walk-ing in this regard, the former associated with short-ness of breath, and self-enclosed or focused patterns of thought, the latter with the rhythmic space suited to free-ranging conversation. SoL was notably different. It allowed verbal communication to enter more fully into the act of running and consequently forged a powerful sense of running collectively for the enjoyment of others. The specific ways in which its choreography made running a more socially relational and shared ex-pression of togetherness, demands more detailed explanation which pays attention to the choreogra-phy of communication, and how irrepressibility and spontaneity emerged as qualities of performance. The great majority of volunteer runners were in-volved in SoL for one night only. For them, the event was initially encountered through online (or word-of-mouth) recruitment campaigns, and was com-monly identified as something that looked like a bit of fun. Accordingly, it was a spectacle entered into with a spirit of curiosity, but without any great depth of knowledge, and also differing degrees of readi-ness in terms of preparatory training. While some runners came along with a friend and so were ready-made for conversation, many arrived at the registra-tion desk unaccompanied. A group dynamic and team ethic was quickly fostered. Following an introductory pep talk from

the Creative Director of NVA, each runner joined up with a different colour-coded group numbering be-tween 10 and 15 in total, including an assigned run-leader pairing. The leaders provided an introductory tutorial on the simple system of signals to be used by the group as the primary means of communication during the performance (see Fig. 4). Different arm movements signalled a specific command: to begin running in a particular direction, or style, according to a set pattern, or to jog on the spot. The LED light suits worn by each runner ensured that these ges-ture signs were visible, and thus quickly communi-cable up or down the line of runners strung out along a pathway, ideally to be spaced at distances of 25 metres. In the interests of producing quietude as an event atmosphere the creative design team was keen to ensure that the running performance should hap-pen as silently as possible and so preferred visual cues to verbal calls or barked commands. In practice, on the open hillside there was plenty of verbal communication, operating in com-bination with the prescribed body language of wav-ing illuminated arms. The relatively gentle pace of running allowed for hushed conversation, side-of-the-mouth gossiping and chatter between group members, much of it in the form of excitable and observational exclamations. There were snatched efforts to find a way with words to describe the dra-matically unfolding scene in which we were all now operating parts. Or simply, pointers given to the latest flash point in the landscaped light show: Whooahh, look at that over there!, Hey, check out the view!, Wow, all of their colours just changed. This shared sensuous appreciation of the perfor-mance might have been unintended and impromptu but was a crucial affective element of the running experience. Darkness is a phenomenon we can feel as a velvety and enveloping, as if it embalms ex-perience, but still night air will also carry sound to a distance. Quite suddenly, swells of euphoria at the heady realization of mass participation were voiced in whoops of delight lifting out of the dark-ness, although from exactly where or whom it was impossible to tell. Landscapism felt in a quicken-ing of the pulse, the chemical rush of endorphins, and the sudden realization that our presence was transformative. Other warmly sociable presences and welcoming voices issued out of the darkness, quite unexpectedly: non-paying spectators, inquis-itive roving teens, rogue photographers occupy-ing choice panoramic spots in the landscape, and the event marshals posted to guard the crag side.



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Greetings and gee-ups were also exchanged with other running groups when paths briefly crossed in the thick of closely choreographed routines. Specific theatrical relations were struck with the neighbouring runners, positioned immedi-ately to the fore and to the rear. Banter and running jokes emerged, but so too a seriousness of purpose. Each collective was committed to, and united by, the prospect of achieving the desired visual effect for the viewing audience approaching the summit of Arthurs Seat. This meant keeping group forma-tions as tight and orderly as possible, without losing any members to the darkness or through tiredness, and to follow the instructions provided by the group leader, then clearly communicate them down the line of runners. Given the considerable range in lev-els of fitness, and differences in hill-running expe-rience and confidence with underfoot conditions, an ethic of mutual aid proved the most effective way to ensure the performance would deliver on its

spectacular promise, and keep everyone safe from harm. Warning shouts about small hazards awaiting any unsuspecting pair of feet passed down the line of runners from front to back: Watch it! Big stone, Slippy patch!, Careful now. Steep wee drop com-ing up. For the regular runner well used to functioning in the company of one, the overall effect of participa-tion was unusually relational, perhaps best described as running alone-together. The feeling lingered be-yond the performance event itself. Voluntarily com-ing together for a period of three to four hours might seem a transient sort of connection. However, with light suits returned and hung up in the wardrobe tent, farewells were tinged with a hint of regret that there would not be more time to review the intensity and immediacy of this collective experience. But there were late night trains and buses to be caught, and work waiting in the morning, and no time left for that kind of talk.

Figure 4. Runners learning how to throw shapes.Source: NVA.



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Staging light and dark as worldly spectacleBesides shaping the individual experiences of par-ticipating walkers and runners, SoL also staged a spectacle in which space a phenomenon at once universally distant and, socially proximate could be apprehended according to the continuous inter-play between levels of light and darkness. Weather conditions (cloudy or clear) and the phases of the moon, were variously influential. The crumpled to-pography of Holyrood Park, situated in the heart of an urban area, enabled the SoL production team to work with different pitches of darkness, shifting ac-cording to ambient and atmospheric light condi-tions, and the leakage, or bleed, between these fields of visibility. As such, an axis formed between local geography and worldly aurora. Generally, it is un-derstood that light pollution arising from the densely clustered artificial illumination of contemporary ur-ban environments reduces the aesthetic, symbolic and sensual affect of artful illumination (Edensor 2013). Over-illumination saturates much dwelt-space. The resultingly omnipresent yellow-pink hue said to produce nocturnal blandscapes, leav-ing experience of real darkscapes largely expelled into the realm of prehistory and mythology (Schlr 1998, p. 57). Observations from SoL invite a subtler account-ing for landscapes illuminated affects. Certainly, the gloom that gathers in the deep cleft of land scored below Arthurs Seat (known locally as the Hunters Bog) ensured that the runners moving forms on the disc of land immediately above the walking route shone out sharply, studded on a broad belt of darkness. But greater atmospheric illumina-tion played its part in the spectacle too. The lights of the city girdling the entire park gradually emerged as walkers gained height. What at low level was a source-less, orange penumbra in the sky overhead, took on sharper, dazzling pinpointed formation once on high. The urban outshine of the city at night heightened the contrast seen in a deep pitch afforded to the black hole of the park below; and in Edinburghs further reaches, smaller areas of park-land and hills created other pockets of darkness. These city black spots punctuated the dense mesh of sodium street lighting, floodlit flagship buildings, and intense flare given off by sports and recreation grounds. The ascending route taken by walkers ac-centuated the visual contrast between the parks darkened, stillness and the visible flows and puls-ings of the citys residential, commercial and trans-port infrastructures.

Progressively and extensively, since the 1880s electric illumination has opened up urban space, its machinery facilitating mobility and highlight-ing selective features (Schivelbusch 1988; Otter 2008). It has also produced a new landscape of modernity (Nasaw 1999, p. 8) comprising a dy-namic pattern of ambient auras, glittering colours and incandescent glare effects; transforming the ap-pearance of structures and surfaces that are fixed and solid by day, into things insubstantial and spec-tral by night. Such visual cues, prompting visions of the city as a metabolism full of unceasing ener-gies and flows, can be a source for conflicting senti-ments. At given moments, the very presence of SoL had counter- intuitive affect, pushing attention away from the lightshow, towards the urban milieu be-yond, estranging its fabric into something magical, even dreamlike. This defamiliarized a well-known skyline into an exciting, phantasmagoric specta-cle. At other moments, other city sensibilities is-sued forth. The distance felt from the seething city could provoke a sense of loneliness, uncanny isola-tion, or detachment from familiar human energies; even of missing out on potential happenings, and the warmth afforded by others. The immersive environment produced by walk-ers and runners transformed apprehension of sub-jects, landscape and auras, enchanting differently according to nearness or distance. As such, land-scape took varying expression: substantive, figura-tive, abstract, cinematic and surreal. When seen at close quarters, trotting across the slopes or striding out along pathways, runners resembled a cartoon an-imation or cyborg figure. But with certain parts of the body clearly spotlighted (legs, arms, head) in-dividuals fluent or ungainly running gait was still immediately apparent. At a greater distance, shape, style and form was no longer fixed in the limelight. The effect occurring was one born of generality rather than difference. For the audience, illuminated forms could easily be abstracted from any kinetic human origin, such that the primary visual experi-ence was of the shifting distribution of light and dark across a two-dimensional surface, and of the chore-ographed patterns created by set-piece formations, spacings and movements. In these moments, geo-graphy was eclipsed. The grander panoramic harmonies of the chore-ographed scheme became apparent in long unbro-ken strings of light, each evenly distant from the next in line, or congregated in clusters before dispersing once more, producing ragged constellations. When



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in continuous movement, runners as light sources created synchronized geometries, each a segment or node of a larger shape, configuring into circles or el-lipses, crosses, radiating spokes and clustered hubs. As well as having the power to transfix, the same patterns held the potential to bewitch, suggesting an index of other perceived beings, times and places. Onlookers remarked that en masse the illuminations resembled fireflies, video games, tracer fire, a childs kaleidoscope toy, a firework display, some futuris-tic Earth ritual or an extra-terrestrial visitation from the starriest of stars. Moments of reverie and flights of the imagination could be broken by other spe-cific phases of movement, drawing attention to the path skirting the outermost edge of Salisbury Crags, or highlighting contour lines on what would other-wise have appeared as a dark, indistinguishable land mass. With the connection between the immediate world and physical movement resolved, landscape was once again perceived in three-dimensions (see Fig. 5). The walkers were also part of the staged illumi-nation of the landscape, their accumulated presence

contrasting with the more kinetic forms generated by the runners. The walking staff had a purpose besides that of lighting a pool of ground around the walk-ers feet. At a distance, their white glow produced a single moving diagonal line of light reaching up-wards, while the bodies of their bearers remained in-visible. At higher levels, the glowing line of light snaked, forming chevrons, tracing the steep cut of the path followed. New resemblances sprang to the minds eye of participants. Expressions of land-scape appreciation were shared in murmured won-der, with collective presence compared to: the lava flows that once poured from the volcano; the pro-gress of pilgrims towards some sacred station, clus-tered together for safety carrying candles and lamps to light the way; an army en route to do battle; vil-lagers driven by superstition and fear in pursuit of the devilish. Differentially, the spatial illumination of running and walking revealed how darkness and light mingle affective and sensual qualities (Edensor 2012) summoning up of myriad visions, and sharp-ening an attunement to the structures and properties of the world at night.

Figure 5. Runners patterning the Park, above the illuminated cityscape of Edinburgh, and Scotlands Central Belt.Source: NVA.



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Conclusion: landscapism as cultural sensibility, expression and productIn the contemporary cultural economy, SoL be-longs to a relatively new category of festivals, in-stallations, artworks and site designs, including earlier work by NVA (Farquhar 2005), that use the staged combination of movement, illumination and darkness to create a poetics of light (Bille and Srensen 2007), enchanting ordinary spaces and familiar landscapes. Given the growing signifi-cance of these events and parallel developments in geographical research concerned with landscape as an experiential and atmospheric milieu we see value in giving a name to the sorts of cultural sen-sibility and social experience that they produce. We call this landscapism, a term that encapsulates the transporting and enchanting affects that result from estranging the encounter with topography and, by association, with terrain and atmosphere. Landscapism is a quality conjured, materially and immaterially. It is what happens to habitual forms of sensual appreciation when these are dramatized and co-produced en masse. Artistically, this is a quality of experience that can be enacted as much as installed in place, and that can gather (and dissi-pate) as event participants feel themselves to be in-tegral to the milieu and phenomena to which they are simultaneously bearing witness. It blurs the line traditionally separating spectator from participant, sometimes raising uncertainty about the role being played, as agent or object in the event. It invites feelings of presence among and between, and occa-sionally of isolation. By making inventive and playful use of lighting effects and aesthetics, landscapism can also trou-ble a modern urban design imperative for the in-discriminate illumination of environments, and the banishing of conditions of darkness from modern socio-infrastructural systems. In this cultural scene, experimental practices and performance artworks thus take on a critical edge, scrambling the nor-mative values by which the illumination of space comes to be understood as a public good, and tem-porarily enacting alternative patterned aesthet-ics, through nuanced experiment with lighting and darkness. Crucially, the creative use of light and dark, in combination with movement, was respon-sive to landscape setting, defamiliarizing (or some-times atmospherically lighting) iconic city scenery. At differing points during the running-performance and the walking procession, the specifics of place receded, and a sense of space emerged from profile,

contour and gradient. Participation generated so-matic and imaginative responses to landscape, as something to be attentively looked at, listened to and felt out. Commonly neglected or dulled, the sensational dimensions of experience (tactile, au-ditory, proprioceptive and olfactory apprehensions) were allowed greater primacy through conditions of controlled sensory deprivation, a process that rendered landscape as a strangely, transporting happening. SoL was, above all, a participatory experience, not concerned with didactically pushing an event narrative. Instead, it invited diverse readings or sen-sual engagements in which walkers and runners, collectively and individually, fused space, sociality and sensation. It was an invitation and introduction to landscapism, generated by the walking and run-ning bodies encountering embodied practices and the park landscape anew. Participation and perfor-mance were experienced very differently of course, forged through different conditions for social inter-action, and contrasting engagements on-the-ground and in the apprehension of a greater landscape. The event also underlined the multiplicity of the ways in contemporary social and cultural life that walking and running might be undertaken as differently pro-ductive, culturally informed practices. Experiences, sensations and expressions gen-erated by SoL also revealed often overlooked com-monalities shared between walking and running: in moving across space in these ways, the body con-nects and disconnects to and from the landscape al-though being simultaneously entangled with it (Lund 2012, p. 227). The event thus continuously unfolded as a flow of experience in which absorp-tion in surroundings, involuntary memories and in-trospection, symbolic and historical resonances, conversations, sensual impressions and physical effort were enfolded, during ascents and descents, resting periods, points of congregation, passage across particular terrain, and the diversions offered by the illuminated bodies and the bright cityscape. In SoL, the choreography of walking and running, the distinctive qualities of landscape traversed, and the staging of light and dark offered intensities of ex-perience that transcended the habituated apprehen-sion and meaning of space in the everyday.

AcknowledgementsOur thanks to NVA for cooperation and interest shown during this research.



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Tim EdensorGeography and Environmental ManagementSchool of Science and engineeringManchester Metropolitan UniversityJohn Dalton BuildingChester StreetManchester M1 5GDUnited KingdomEmail: [email protected]

Hayden LorimerSchool of Geographical and Earth SciencesUniversity of GlasgowEast Quadrangle, University AvenueGlasgow G12 8QQScotlandEmail: [email protected]

Notes1. Readers wishing to see images of SoL in colour are encouraged

to carry out a quick Google Image search using Speed of Light and Edinburgh.

2. As researchers, our awareness of the creative and procedural aspects of event planning and delivery was extended and deep-ened by a longer-term, more systematic association with the SoL team led by NVA. For one author, project involvement was multifaceted: as an invited member of the SoL Scientific Advisory Investigations Panel who met to exchange early ideas about event design in 2011; drafting a runner-friendly Q-&-A to be completed by participating run leaders and profiled on the SoL website; participation in early test runs with prototype light suits and choreographed running routes; and the contribution of a short essay to the official event programme (Lorimer 2012a).

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