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Shadows & Darkness

Close
  • 252. Pools of Light

    Problem

    Uniform illumination—the sweetheart of the lighting engineers—serves no useful purpose whatsoever. In fact, it destroys the social nature of space, and makes people feel disoriented and unbounded.

    Solution

    Place the lights low, and apart, to form individual pools of light which encompass chairs and tables like bubbles to reinforce the social character of the spaces which they form. Remember that you can’t have pools of light without the darker places in between.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​Lights and lamps​​
    2. ​​False train station​​
    • darkness
    • light
  • The eaves deep and the walls dark

    I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.

    Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper, In Praise of Shadows
    • darkness
  • Empty Every Night

    Image from embarkkiosk.chazen.wisc.edu on 2020-08-16 at 9.55.36 PM.jpeg
    David H. Becker, Chazen Museum of Art
    chazen.wisc.edu
    • emptiness
    • horror
    • darkness
  • Hello darkness, my old friend

    Hello darkness, my old friend
    I’ve come to talk with you again

    Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, The Sound Of Silence
    • darkness
    • melancholy
  • A time when time was not

    Darkness cannot say: “I precede the coming light”, but there is a sense in which light can say, “Darkness preceded me”.

    Doubtless there is an event, X, in the future, by reference to which we may say that we are at present in a category of Not-X, but until X occurs, the category of Not-X is without reality. Only X can give reality to Not-X; that is to say, Not-Being depends for its reality upon Being. In this way we may faintly see how the creation of Time may be said automatically to create a time when Time was not, and how the Being of God can be said to create a Not-Being that is not God.

    Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
    • darkness
    • light
    • time
    • being
  • Shortlist of interesting spaces

    Nick Trombley, barnsworthburning.net
    • craft
    • work
    • walking
    • www
    • notetaking
    • words
    • euphony
    • melancholy
    • zen
    • darkness
    • gardens
  • The tower

    Sketch for The Tower – a cheese grater.

    The tower is just a common grater. It is not used to look out toward a distant world from above, but only to slice, grind and grate its surroundings.

    Anyone who stepped inside would see an irremediably cold, metallic, empty void, and a few scattered holes where the world literally seeps through in pieces. It is a sad project.

    Smiljan Radić, Every Thing
    1. ​​After the Fair​​
    • architecture
    • melancholy
    • darkness
  • Darkness becomes you

    Searle: In psych tests on deep space, I ran a number of sensory deprivation trials, tested in total darkness, on floatation tanks - and the point about darkness is, you float in it. You and the darkness are distinct from each other because darkness is an absence of something, it's a vacuum. But total light envelops you. It becomes you.

    Sunshine
    www.imdb.com
    • darkness
    • light
  • Lights and lamps

    Screen Shot 2020-10-08 at 9_35_10 PM.png
    Hayao Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro
    1. ​​In Praise of Shadows​​
    2. ​​252. Pools of Light​​
    • light
    • darkness
  • Deep shadows and darkness are essential

    During overpowering emotional experiences, we tend to close off the distancing sense of vision; we close the eyes when dreaming, listening to music, or caressing our beloved ones. Deep shadows and darkness are essential, because they dim the sharpness of vision, make depth and distance ambiguous, and invite unconscious peripheral vision and tactile fantasy.

    Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
    1. ​​In Praise of Shadows​​
    • emotion
    • darkness
  • To carve a volume into the void of darkness

    The nocturnal sound is a reminder of human solitude and mortality, and it makes one conscious of the entire slumbering city. Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of dripping water in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear in the darkness becomes a cavity sculpted directly in the interior of the mind.

    Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
    • sound
    • darkness
    • sleep
    • solitude
  • Those glowing domes and minarets

    I began to have my doubts about those glowing domes and minarets. Finally, I felt that this modern celebration of history subtracted something: I felt gypped out of the dark.

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    • darkness

    Problematic verbiage notwithstanding, I enjoy the concept of feeling like you have a right to freedom from light.

  • We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness

    George Orwell, 1984
    • darkness
    • place
  • 135. Tapestry of Light and Dark

    Problem

    In a building with uniform light level, there are few “places” which function as effective settings for human events. This happens because, to a large extent, the places which make effective settings are defined by light.

    Solution

    Create alternating areas of light and dark throughout the building, in such a way that people naturally walk toward the light, whenever they are going to important places: seats, entrances, stairs, passages, places of special beauty, and make other areas darker, to increase the contrast.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​Einmal Ist Keinmal​​
    • darkness
    • light
  • If you look for the light

    If you look for the light,
    you can often find it.
    But if you look for the dark,
    that is all you will ever see.

    — Uncle Iroh

    The Legend of Korra
    • light
    • darkness
    • goodness
    • evil
  • I would want to be in that darkness

    If there were a part of life dark enough to keep out of it a light from art, I would want to be in that darkness, fumbling around if necessary, but alive.

    And I rather think that contemporary music would be there in the dark too, bumping into things, knocking others over and in general adding to the disorder that characterizes life (if it is opposed to art) rather than adding to the order and stabilized truth beauty and power that characterize a masterpiece (if it is opposed to life).

    And is it? It is.

    John Cage, Silence
    • art
    • darkness
    • music
  • Vamburglars

    Burglary was originally only possible in a household or dwelling; the very word contains an etymological variant on the Latin burgus, for “castle” or “fortified home” (from which other words, such as burgher and even borough, also derive). Common law definitions of burglary also originally required the person to break into a house or dwelling at night. Giving historical burglary an oddly vampiric dimension, you could not, legally speaking, be a burglar while the sun was still out.

    Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City
    • darkness
  • She was the universe

    The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
    And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
    Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
    And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
    They slept on the abyss without a surge—
    The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
    The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
    The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
    And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
    Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

    Lord Byron, Darkness
    • darkness
    • time
    • silence
  • Darkling in the eternal space

    The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
    Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
    Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
    Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
    Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day.

    Lord Byron, Darkness
    • light
    • darkness
  • An invisible landscape

    Isaura, city of the thousand wells, is said to rise over a deep, subterranean lake. On all sides, wherever the inhabitants dig long vertical holes in the ground, they succeed in drawing up water, as far as the city extends, and no farther. Its green border repeats the dark outline of the buried lake; an invisible landscape conditions the visible one; everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock’s calcareous sky.

    Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
    • darkness

    Thin Cities 1

  • Extinguished

    One by one the lamps were all extinguished.

    Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
    • darkness
  • Lacquerware

    There are good reasons why lacquer soup bowls are still used, qualities which ceramic bowls simply do not possess. Remove the lid from a ceramic bowl, and there lies the soup, every nuance of its substance and color revealed. With lacquerware there is a beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its color hardly different from that of the bowl itself.

    Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper, In Praise of Shadows
    • darkness
    • material
  • The world of shadows

    The 'mysterious Orient' of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depth of an alcove to which the sunlight never penetrated.

    This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.

    Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper, In Praise of Shadows
    • darkness
    • mystery
  • The great soundless whirl of darkness

    I could not know that even then the little light was being drawn irresistibly into the great soundless whirl of darkness and that I was watching a light that was destined soon to blink out and disappear.

    Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro
    • light
    • darkness
    • melancholy
  • A handful of dust

    There is shadow under this red rock,
    (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
    And I will show you something different from either
    Your shadow at morning striding behind you
    Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
    I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

    T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
    • fear
    • darkness
  • In Praise of Shadows

    A Book by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​Things that shine and glitter​​
    2. ​​A naked bulb​​
    3. ​​The Japanese toilet​​
    4. ​​Empty dreams​​
    5. ​​Most important of all are the pauses​​
    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    2. ​​Daylight should not tyrannize architecture​​
    3. ​​Deep shadows and darkness are essential​​
    4. ​​Lights and lamps​​
    5. ​​The gentle light of shoji screens​​
    • zen
    • darkness
    • light
    • material
    • making
  • Darkness

    A Poem by Lord Byron
    1. ​​I had a dream​​
    2. ​​But one thought​​
    3. ​​She was the universe​​
    4. ​​Darkling in the eternal space​​
    • darkness
    • death
  • Light & Shadow

    An Artwork by Kumi Yamashita
    kumiyamashita.com
    Image from kumiyamashita.com on 2020-12-24 at 12.41.54 PM.jpeg

    CHAIR, 2014
    FRAGMENTS, 2009

    I sculpt using both light and shadow. I construct single or multiple objects and place them in relation to a single light source. The complete artwork is therefore comprised of both the material (the solid objects) and the immaterial (the light or shadow).

    • light
    • darkness
    • objects

See also:
  1. light
  2. melancholy
  3. material
  4. zen
  5. time
  6. mystery
  7. art
  8. music
  9. fear
  10. architecture
  11. death
  12. making
  13. silence
  14. goodness
  15. evil
  16. emptiness
  17. horror
  18. place
  19. emotion
  20. sound
  21. sleep
  22. solitude
  23. craft
  24. work
  25. walking
  26. www
  27. notetaking
  28. words
  29. euphony
  30. gardens
  31. objects
  32. being
  1. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
  2. Thomas J. Harper
  3. Lord Byron
  4. Christopher Alexander
  5. Murray Silverstein
  6. Sara Ishikawa
  7. Juhani Pallasmaa
  8. Virginia Woolf
  9. Italo Calvino
  10. Natsume Sōseki
  11. John Cage
  12. T.S. Eliot
  13. Smiljan Radić
  14. Geoff Manaugh
  15. David H. Becker
  16. George Orwell
  17. Michael Sorkin
  18. Hayao Miyazaki
  19. Nick Trombley
  20. Kumi Yamashita
  21. Dorothy Sayers
  22. Paul Simon
  23. Art Garfunkel