The experience of light and darkness is central to all acts of vision, and informs the ways in which we represent, inhabit, and imagine the world. The 2016 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series explores the significance of light and darkness in making, viewing and thinking about visual and material cultures. Over five lectures, scholars and practitioners from different fields reflect on such issues as the potential and limits of light and darkness as artistic materials, and as a subject and method of enquiry for art historians; the significance of light or obscurity as social agents; the ritual functions and perceptual implications of darkness and luminosity in ceremonial settings; and the technical, aesthetic and methodological challenges of lighting design in environments for the display of art. Investigating the nexus between sensory, cultural and historical apprehension, these lectures expose how light and darkness affect bodily and intellectual experience, and contribute to a debate about their role in art history and related disciplines.
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Tue 11 Oct, 2016 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
Light and colour; dark and shadow
Light and colour and the other side of the same coin, darkness and shadow, are all fundamental aspects of works of art in a practical way (can we see the work?), a formal fashion (what…
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Tue 18 Oct, 2016 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
Solid Light, Dark Rooms
Born St Paul’s Cray, England, in 1946. Lives and works in Manhattan. McCall is known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with “Line Describing a Cone,” in which a volumetric…
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Tue 22 Nov, 2016 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
Attuned illuminations: On the cultu...
Light does more than simply illuminate spaces. It fills them with a tone; a ‘something’ that may seize us emotionally as an atmosphere. The use of light to create such atmospheres is however not simply…
More Info about Attuned illuminations: On the cultural practices of illuminating spaces
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Tue 29 Nov, 2016 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
Searching for darkness: archaeologi...
Throughout Irish prehistory human groups sought out caves for a variety of activities including burial, excarnation and as theatres in which to conduct religious rituals. Fundamental to all such rites was the interaction with darkness,…
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Tue 13 Dec, 2016 Frank Davis Memorial Lecture Series
Seeing art in the best light
For the majority of gallery visitors, sight is the principal sense through which we can experience artworks. To facilitate good vision we need good lighting and light is therefore an essential element of the gallery environment. But the very light that activates our vision can also damage the precious exhibits we wish to see. Exhibition lighting itself therefore embodies…