Over the last year, I have been researching the use of artificial light at former industrial sites in the Ruhr region of West Germany. My research project — ‘Lighting the Ruhr’ — seeks to understand the use and significance of artificial light within Ruhrgebiet industrial heritage and culture. The project is based at the Ruhr Universit€at Bochum and is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In Germany I am in a relatively dark part of the globe. Sunshine duration measures around 1662 hours per year (compared to 2684 hours per year in Delhi). Yet, the Ruhr is one of the brightest lit areas of Western Europe. The light comes from eleven industrial cities that form a polycentric urban area that is home to a population of around 5.3 million people. The Ruhrgebiet was once the centre of European coal, iron and steel production. From the late 1950s crises in these industries led to their contraction and irreversible regional economic decline. In 1988, the Nordrhein-Westfalen government initiated a ten-year programme to reshape the economic, cultural, ecological and spatial geography of the Ruhr, a process known as ‘structural change’. The programme, the Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park Project (IBA) was ambitious, taking a landscape approach to an area covering around 800 square kilometres. In total, 117 separate projects were realized, including the revitalization of landscape areas and former industrial sites and the creation of an industrial heritage route. IBA considered the spatial and aesthetic qualities of the urban landscape by day and night, and through a series of competitions commissioned architects and light artists to create new landmarks, including ‘lighthouse’ projects, that would stimulate cultural engagement at local and tourism levels. In Duisburg a 230-hectare park was created — Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord — on the site of the former Thyssen ironworks. Here, in the evening, a light show designed by the British light artist Jonathan Park, illuminates blast furnaces, bunkers, chimneys and a gasometer (Fig. 1). Elsewhere, light art has been installed on the top of mine heaps. For instance, in the city of Bottrop a 60m high, climbable steel and concrete pyramid— the Tetraeder, designed by German architect Wolfgang Christ — was installed on a mine heap. The structure also contains a lightwork (Fraktal, designed by J€urgen LIT Fischer) (Fig. 2). At night, the pyramid’s summit is illuminated with yellow light and seems to float above the city streets. Such sites are accessible at night; I can walk through Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord at 2am if I wish. I therefore carry out fieldwork by day and by night, examining lighting systems by day and light effects at night, observing sightlines between illuminated objects and noting when objects are visible from the region’s Autobahns. I also observe public engagements with sites at night, including tourism events. Such night work resonates with industrial shift systems. The ‘night-shift’ is a common marketing motif in the Ruhr; the popular annual ExtraSchicht event (Night of Industrial Culture) sees venues open till at least 2am. In this note, I set out some thoughts on artificial light and the night. In 2005, the historian A. Roger Ekirch noted that the ‘Night time has remained a terra incognita of peripheral concern, the forgotten half of the human experience’, and various other

中文翻译：

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后中世纪和当代考古学中的人造光，夜班和中心主义

在过去的一年中，我一直在研究西德鲁尔地区以前的工业场所对人造光的使用。我的研究项目“点燃鲁尔河”（Lighting the Ruhr）–试图了解人造光在鲁尔盖比（Ruhrgebiet）工业遗产和文化中的用途和意义。该项目基于波鸿鲁尔大学，由亚历山大·冯·洪堡基金会资助。在德国，我处在地球相对较暗的地方。每年的日照时间大约为1662小时（德里则为每年2684小时）。然而，鲁尔区是西欧最亮的地区之一。光线来自11个工业城市，这些工业城市形成了一个多中心城市区域，人口约530万人。Ruhrgebiet曾经是欧洲煤炭，钢铁生产的中心。从1950年代后期开始，这些行业的危机导致其萎缩和不可逆转的区域经济下滑。1988年，北莱茵-威斯特法伦州政府启动了一项十年计划，以重塑鲁尔的经济，文化，生态和空间地理，这一过程被称为“结构性变化”。该计划是一项国际性的包奥斯特朗Emscher公园项目（IBA），雄心勃勃，采用了占地约800平方公里的景观方法。总共实现了117个单独的项目，包括振兴景观区和以前的工业用地以及建立工业遗产路线。IBA白天和黑夜都考虑了城市景观的空间和美学品质，并通过一系列竞赛委托建筑师和灯光艺术家创建新的地标，包括“灯塔”项目，这些项目将促进当地和旅游业的文化参与。在杜伊斯堡，在前蒂森铁厂的原址上，创建了一个230公顷的公园-杜伊斯堡北部的Landschaftspark公园。在这里，晚上，由英国灯光艺术家乔纳森·帕克（Jonathan Park）设计的灯光秀照亮了高炉，掩体，烟囱和煤气表（图1）。在其他地方，轻艺术被安装在矿堆的顶部。例如，在Bottrop市，一座60m高的可攀爬的钢和混凝土金字塔-由德国建筑师Wolfgang Christ设计的Tetraeder-被安装在一个矿山堆上。该结构还包含一个灯饰（Fraktal，由Jurgen LIT Fischer设计）（图2）。到了晚上，金字塔的顶峰被黄光照亮，似乎漂浮在城市街道上方。此类站点在晚上可访问；如果愿意的话，我可以在凌晨2点穿过杜伊斯堡北部的Landschaftspark。因此，我白天和晚上都要进行野外工作，白天要检查照明系统，晚上要检查灯光效果，观察照明对象之间的视线，并注意何时可以从该地区的高速公路看到这些对象。我还观察到夜间公众参与景点的活动，包括旅游活动。这种夜班工作与工业变速系统产生了共鸣。“夜班”是鲁尔区常见的营销主题。每年一度的颇受欢迎的ExtraSchicht活动（工业文化之夜）会在至少凌晨2点开放。在本说明中，我对人造光和夜晚提出了一些想法。在2005年，历史学家A. Roger Ekirch指出，“夜间仍然是周围人关注的领域，