To entertain ourselves. My brother and I sometimes would sneak next to the window to watch the dark sky and start counting the stars, but since it was too dangerous to stand behind the glass when bombings are happening, my mom would tell us that for every star you count, a pimple will form on your hand that will never go away, we moved away from the window and we stopped counting the stars. Till today, I never count the stars. Twelve years ago, while I was living in Lebanon, I would never thought to advocate for dark skies. I was too busy searching for light. Today, because I live in a state of lighting abundance, I can talk about light pollution. And today, because I live in a safe country, I can talk about the beauty of a dark sky. And because I can find my way at night, I can express my desire to see the Milky Way.

Welcome back to the Virtual Lighting Design Community Podcast, a global platform that empowers, inspires, educates and connects the lighting design community. This podcast is brought to you by our premium supporters Aero Hospitality Lighting, creative Lighting Asia, erco, the Signify Lighting Academy and Philix Lighting From darkness to light the impact of light scarcity on communities. Join us on this episode as we delve into a thought-provoking presentation by Nadine Balbaki, founder of Light the Detail. Based in Dubai and Beirut, nadine has over 20 years of experience as a lighting designer. Thank you where Nadine engages with Amardeep Dugar, co-founder of the Virtual Lighting Design Community and principal of lighting research and design in India. To watch the full presentation and gain access to more exclusive content, consider becoming a VLD Pro member and support our mission to provide quality insights for the lighting fraternity. Visit vldcommunity to learn more and be a part of this premier lighting community. Watch the visual version on our YouTube channel and explore a multitude of interviews and presentations like this one. Now let's give the floor to Nadine Balbaki.

Enjoy 11 years ago, my husband and I took the decision to leave our country, lebanon, our home and our family. The move was not driven by job opportunities, but actually to provide our family with a stable life, a life that we never had, knowing, of course, the impact of light pollution on the human health and our well-being and the natural environment. But a deep, heavy feeling aroused in me, and this heavy feeling soon evolved into discomfort, anxiety and fear, a feeling that I had to investigate and I could only understand when I revisited my past. During war times, dark skies were associated with fear, with the heavy sounds of artillery and with screams. To entertain ourselves, my brother and I sometimes would sneak next to the window to watch the dark sky and start counting the stars, but since it was too dangerous to stand behind the glass when bombings are happening, my mom would tell us that for every star you count, a pimple will form on your hand that will never go away. I honestly don't know if she invented it or it was a collective Lebanese mom myth, but it worked. We moved away from the window and we stopped counting the stars. Till today, I never count the stars. Dark skies brought a huge sense of insecurity.

People started looking for alternative lighting sources to light their spaces. Candle and kerosene lamps were widely available. The warm light of the candle, though, never communicated relaxation, but totally the opposite it communicated fear, anger, frustration and deprivation. We then upgraded to install battery-connected batteries, to which we connected fluorescent tubes. Our night turned from warm to bluish, flickering white Generators. Small generators were then made available. Life was almost normal in our home, except that now, almost in each home, almost on each balcony, a noisy machine that produces toxic fumes set aside. A stack of fuel gallons was vibrating. Who cares if it was a ticking bomb? We can study shower. We can simply see.

Large generators with monthly subscriptions compensated the government supply of electricity. The lord of the generators now ruled the game. The result is catastrophic on the environment and had significant impacts on people's health, possibly killing thousands each year in Lebanon, according to Greenpeace. Our skies were still dark, but we never looked. Those scenes were not taking place in a rural, disconnected town. In a rural, disconnected town.

Those scenes were actually happening in the heart of the capital, beirut, in one of the main streets, on the ninth floor of a very modern residential building. Light, over time, became a symbol of wealth that families were able to afford electricity from private generators. The more your house was lit, the more amps you could afford. My first memory of a happy dark sky was at the age of 14 or 15. The long war was over then and unsustainable solutions were made available to enjoy electricity whenever we wanted and whenever we needed. It was my first time that I look at the sky and with my cousin and literally enjoy the scene of the dark skies and the scene of the dark skies and the stars. It is now that I realized that enjoying the dark skies was really two main factors lighting abundance and availability, and safety and security.

Hi Ladeen, this is a fantastic presentation. I am really amazed at a completely different perspective about this whole concept of dark skies, light pollution, more so because I recently published a paper on whole concept of dark skies and biodynamic lighting where I was talking about life centric lighting, where how light pollution is affecting different types of light forms. And I see another presentation where you see that whole concept about chicken farming, where there was more light given to chicken so it was used as a business model and this has completely altered my perspective. And the second uh thing was I just recently visited lebanon and beautiful country, beautiful and I would have never thought about dark skies from this perspective, especially with the whole concept of safety and security when there's a war-torn country. It's a lot to take in at this point of time and I think dark sky advocates need to really start looking at it from perspectives of different people, different areas, because darkness means so much more to some people. So thank you for this perspective.

Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate and thank you for the feedback coming from you because on a personal level, your opinion matters a lot. There are insecurities that come with darkness that only people that relate to the same sometimes life conditions can relate to. I'm not against dark skies and I'm not, on the other hand, I really like and I enjoy, but this comes after a series of things procured. It's not only lighting designers' work, it's a whole chain of collaboration, as I said, between government entities, between lighting designers, because darkness is beautiful when it is accompanied with safety and security, but when there is fear inside of it, it doesn't speak. It doesn't talk and doesn't relate. The same way, and when you live in a deprived society, we don't take lighting for granted, so it kind of brings no-transcript.

So very true, and I completely agree on this front, because we tend to be so parochial in our approach and we look at it from a very blindsided view. It's so important to look at a worldview, look at it from view, looking from different directions, different dimensions of the whole concept, and this presentation really speaks to you in terms of what darkness is, and if you really are advocating for dark skies, you better advocate it in the right manner.

looking at all the way, all the Because today, even me as a lighting designer 20 years, my perception of how I designed the light changed a lot between when I was living in Lebanon and when I moved and lived in Dubai. Because now the parameters have changed. The brief that comes from clients living in Lebanon is totally different from the design brief that comes from people that live in lighting abundance, and I could see that there is a discrepancy somehow, and the discrepancy does not only come from the education, but it comes also from certain fears, traumas, and so on.

Thank you, yeah, I completely agree, and that's why this whole platform was created as a mode of virtually connecting people, connecting activists, connecting lighting designers, connecting decision makers has to come together and actually discuss these key aspects. Because it's not so I'm glad people are discussing about these concepts and ideas, but the whole intent of discussing it in the right manner, connecting all the peoples together, connecting all the dots and coming up with some solutions. It's the whole idea of this platform. For those of you who know me, hello, good to see you again. For those of you who are seeing it for the first time, this is Amaldeep Dugar. I'm one of the founders of the Virtual Lighting Design Community platform. Sorry to interject here into this presentation, but it's been great. Nadine is a dear friend and I'm glad to be a part of this whole discussion and presentation.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Amartya. Thank you.

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