Shedding Light on Droughts: Light in Art Installations as an Awareness Tool

The master thesis studies the value of light art installations as a tool to raise awareness, communicate messages,inspire people and create social engagement to take action and deal with important issues. Additionally, it researchesthe lighting characteristics that have to be considered in order to create a high emotional response. Three case studieson light art installations tackling environmental issues were selected to understand the tools that makes themsuccessful. The final result of the thesis is the design proposal for a site specific light art installation to raise awarenesson droughts and its effects - following the CLUE competition 2019 guidelines - and create social engagement to fightthis major crisis. Specifically, the installation uses daylight in combination with shadows and reflections, in order toachieve the purpose of the installation. In the interest of creating a strong emotional response from the visitors,brightness, color, dynamics, contrast and direction of the perceived light were used to change the visitor’s perception ofthe space. The thesis concludes with the discussion of the evaluation of the installation to prove how effective thedesign is to achieve its purpose on raising awareness on droughts and the presence of the 7 light characteristics inorder to create an emotional response from the visitors.