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Light has always been an essential part of our everyday lives, it improves our vision and boosts our productivity. Rapid urbanization and technological advancements have resulted in increased access to electricity for many cities, in turn, providing a source of unlimited artificial light.

Urbanized megacities around the world are then electrically charged and ready to work beyond the limitations of daylight hours. Some of these most urbanized cities are the very same cities that shine the brightest at night.
Although mesmerising from above, sparkling brightly in the dark face of the earth, the people and animals living in these cities are greatly affected by the negative impacts of this large amount of redundant luminance, in other words, light pollution.

Intrigued by the relationship between the level of urbanization of cities in relation to their brightness,

my project collects and compares data from the brightest cities to the ones that are engulfed in darkness.

LIGHT-DATA Countries with higher GDP rates were megacities with higher standards of living. They were also among the few countries that shone the brightest - with their average lux level ratio per country rising above the international average (1.74 (USA)/ 1.5 (China)/ 1.3 (Japan) to 1). In contrast, those that fall in the list of countries with the lowest GDP rates in 2020, were the same countries that happened to be the darkest - their average lux level ratio per country falling below the international average (0.8 (South Africa)/ 0.7 (Yemen)/ 0.5 (Afghanistan) to 1).

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LIGHT-BOX The data graphs for the project were used to create a light box artefact. This allowed me to physically present the idea, in an abstract artefact form, where the higher the GDP earned, the higher concentration of light emiting from a country.

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