NIGHTWALKING
The following website has been created in order to accompany a research carried out by Anastasia Angeli as a part of
BA(Hons) at UWE, Bristol and
Venice Art Biennale 2017 Steward-Study Fellowship.
What is the impact of artificial lighting on emotions and movement behaviour of the individual walking through Venice at night?
This dissertation explores the impact of street lighting and how it alters individuals’ feelings, movement and use of space, by taking Venice as a main case study.
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It will be achieved through a use of three media that are presented on that website: film, text and mapping.
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Please note that the full version of the dissertation is not shown here as the website is used to accompany my research. To get the full version of the research, please get in touch.
VENICE
Dérive 1
San Marco and Centro Storico
My co-fellow from America, Christi Zuberg, met me at her flat, which is located quite centrally near the Grand Canal. I thought it would be a good place to start as there is a lot happening around. We started the walk at around 22:30 when it was dark enough outside. I was walking and filming while Christi was just following me for safety reasons but enjoying her walk too carrying a glass of wine with her.
We started in the busy area full of buzzing restaurant signs and people chatting and eating. I have not been to that area of Venice before and had little idea of what is around it. While walking though I noticed that crowds of people tent to make me turn from the ‘main’ roads to and adjacent smaller (even smaller) paths. This resulted to coming into a couple of dead ends but much less then I expected. Alternating tints of street lamps hanging of the houses onto the narrow streets made it more visually diverse. This was also enhanced by the low intensity of lighting spread across the city so that areas of light and shadow alternate between each other.
It was only in this area of Venice that I saw the lights that turn on when people approach them. For some reason I do not find these lights appealing. Yes, they minimise energy use but from the perspective of someone walking – they do not give an indication that they are there until someone is near it. I just find it a bit cheeky and annoying.
While walking I was trying not to pay attention to the signs constantly showing the directions for the main tourist attractions. I was very surprised to end up at San Marco square within the first 20 minutes of walking. I did not even know it was that close. It looked magical there mostly because of the storm the day before that flooded parts of the square. But it was well too crowded to after enjoying some live music we left the square.
When walking on some of the main shopping streets leading from the square, I noticed that I found advertising lights quite disturbing. During the lights all these signs are evenly lit and do not take so much attention but at night they stand out a lot and grab eyes of everyone passing by. Considering the fact that no one is even allowed to enter most of those shops at that time, it felt unnecessary. I kept trying to move to the empty ‘scary’ narrow streets to avoid them.
How big was my surprise when very soon after leaving San Marco I ended up back there. Without noticing it (and even trying to avoid it probably) we made a circle and came back to it from another side. After that I started wondering how far this San Marco ‘magnet’ reaches which I can test during other walks starting from different locations, more distant from the square.
The rest of the walk was governed a bit by trying to get out of the magnet which did not seem successful as completely unintentionally I walked back to the street with the flat where we started, which included passing through the street that overlooked the square from yet another point.
I decided to stop there as it felt like a natural end of the journey. The route was recorded using an app on the phone, which looks very different to how I imagined it during walking and even more different to how I thought it will go before starting the walk.
It was a great experience of walking at night in Venice. More analysis will come after looking through the video footage when I will be able to analyse the effect of artificial lighting on my behaviour more.
Dérive 2
Cannaregio and Castello
We agreed to meet with Eleonora Sovrani at night at a random location that she has picked by opening a page in the yellow pages – 5552 Cannaregio was the address we were supposed to start the dérive.
It was interesting for me to go strolling around the city with Eleonora as I met her on the tour organised by ‘We Are Here Venice’ group and it turned out that she has been conducting research on the theory of the dérive for more than seven years. She was primarily interested in the history, Guy Debord and other International Situationalists but even so she was the only person I met who has been consciously (if that is possible) doing the derives before. In addition to that, she was born in Venice and spent most of her life there.
Due to Google maps confusion on where 5552 Cannaregio is, we arrived at two completely different spots so it took us a while to try and find each other. So we decided to go from the main street until both of us did not know where we are and start the dérive there.
We were walking it was interesting to observe that both of us wanted to follow the same route with only a couple of exceptions. Is that path determined by the urban fabric? We started far enough from San Marco and I did warn Eleonora that it was the place that I kept coming back to during my last dérive. So I think we were trying to avoid it pretty consciously but without saying it. I was glad that Eleonora brought some of the classical Situationalist elements to the dérive, e.g. red wine and the idea of taking auto-stop on a boat (which did not work but the idea itself seemed interesting).
During the walk we were mostly talking about Venice, her vision of the city and the Situalionalist International library opening event that she is organising for July 28. We were only briefly mentioning how artificial light influences her and me. I think it is a positive thing as it makes the path less consciously guided by the light so the effect of it will be explored through the video done during the walk.
What I noticed is that at first I was following the quieter routes with less people due to curiosity but later on at the night, as I started to become more tired, I tent to choose the brighter lit streets – maybe because that way I knew it will not end up with a dead end and because the amount of people on those relatively loud streets was brought to minimum by the time.
After around one hour of walking we started noticing that we were floating somewhere around the place where 5552 Cannaregio could potentially be so we started to pay attention to the numbers and casually hoping to find that house out of curiosity. The houses in Venice are numbered in a very strange way and do not always follow a logical pattern so that desire did not make the walk any more rational. In the last five or so minutes we were actively searching for the door with the number 5552 written on it and to our big surprise, we found it! So we decided to finish our dérive to the night as it seemed to be the best place to finish – not only due to the irony that we were meant to start there but also because both of us were tired by that time.
I was analysing the lighting much less during that walk due to a nature of the walk and Eleonora’s influence so I am looking forward to look through the video and analyse the effects of artificial lighting on our journey (that did not end up at San Marco, even though we came very close to it).
Dérive 3
San Polo, Santa Croce and Dorsodouro
This time we met with Phoebe Cripps (a British Council fellow) near Campo Santa Margherita, outside Venice Jazz Club – a place that my Google map app has been highlighting for me since I came to Venice. It is in the Academia area – another side of the city to where I have been dériving before.
After getting lost in the streets we have ‘found’ ourselves in a 20th century looking setting that differed from the rest of Venice. Same lighting patterns were prevalent which made the streets feel familiar even though the buildings were crisp with graffiti on the walls.
During the walk Phoebe described very nicely how she sees streets in Venice, comparing them to that of London where she is from. Wavy vertical movements on water rather than horizontal quick patterns encouraged by the cars, smell and sound…
Again, as previously, I noticed that mostly we were naturally drawn into the same streets, which I thought was interesting – as long as two people drop any reasons for walking, their paths in the city become similar. Would everyone just end up in San Marco if no one had to be anywhere in particular? This time, actually, Piazzale Roma was acting like a magnet, instead of San Marco, which was connected to our starting point by a couple of bridges, while the main bus station connecting Venice to the rest of the city could be reached easily. We did not actually go to the station due to violent neon lighting that was not pleasing to either of us but we walked along it for some time as the main streets seemed to all come to Piazzale Roma in that area.
It was interesting to walk with someone who has been studying French at university (and later – Curating of modern art for masters) as one of the modules was a module on International Situationalist and dérive theory. This made me think about another dimension of Venice and look at it from a mode conceptual point of view, comparing it to London – a city where Phoebe has been living since childhood. Comparing London to Venice made me pay attention to unique lighting strategies that Venice was using for many years, which made me want to come and do more of these dérives in different cities and continents and try to compare them.
It was the last day off in Venice for both of us, which made the walk feel almost nostalgic. I felt like I was saying buy to the city, hence I wanted to explore the most of it while I could. We finished the dérive in the dead-end, which seemed quite poetic. The Venice is full of dead-ends and sometimes it feels like everywhere and everything is just a combination of dead-ends. However, in Venice these dead-end often lead to a beautiful dimly lit view that turns it into a place to stay, gaze and enjoy.
