Noctines.

Writing the nocturnal narratives of today and tomorrow.

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Why contribute and consult Noctines?

Noctines offers a unique opportunity to connect with others who share your experiences at the places you love to visit at night. By using the platform, you can explore a vast array of nighttime locations around the world, discovering new spots to enjoy after dark.

Noctines also provides a valuable resource for comparing and contrasting different perspectives on nightlife. It reveals the wide range of opinions, preconceptions, and cultural practices associated with nighttime activities globally. This insight allows you to appreciate the diverse ways in which people around the world experience and perceive the night.

Moreover, your personal stories and experiences play a crucial role in shaping the world’s first qualitative map of nocturnal experiences. By contributing to this map, you help create a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of nighttime environments, enriching our collective knowledge and fostering a deeper appreciation of the night.

Nocturnal stories.

L'Observatoire de la Nuit recognizes that preserving natural darkness and the health of all living things requires a deeper understanding of their intricate connections. By embracing this understanding, we can foster the creation of sustainable, high-quality nighttime environments, whether softly illuminated or left in their natural state.

Noctines is dedicated to enriching the global conversation about the balance between darkness and artificial light in daily life.

Through gathering personal stories—both real-life experiences and imagined aspirations—Noctines seeks to uncover how people shape their cultural perceptions of night and light.

Field action-research project.

The term Noctines is a French neologism, combining comptines (lullabies) and nocturnes (nighttime), invoking the cultural stories shared at dusk across generations. Created by L'Observatoire de la Nuit, a French consultancy specializing in artificial lighting, Noctines is committed to guiding individuals through the cultural transition to a renewed experience of the night. This project is inspired by Nicolas Houel's 2020 PhD thesis, Pedagogy of Light Sobriety.

Noctines' ambition is to delve into personal nighttime narratives to better understand the cultural relationships people have with the night. By taking a research-action approach, Noctines not only contributes to scientific exploration in psychogeography and sensory mapping but also offers valuable insights for urban planners, consultants, and designers.

The ultimate aim is to enhance the quality of nightlife in various regions and to tailor nighttime environments to how people truly live and experience them.

Noctines' framework.

L'Observatoire de la Nuit seeks to balance the technical and sensory elements that shape nighttime environments. Often evaluated through performance, regulatory standards, and environmental considerations, the quality of life at night can sometimes feel reduced to issues like energy management, biodiversity protection, and compliance with norms.

Through the Noctines project, however, L'Observatoire de la Nuit shifts the focus to personal narratives—whether real or imagined—to guide technical and technological decisions. In essence, it seeks to return lighting to its rightful place: at the heart of human experience. The vision of the Noctines project unfolds in three stages:

  • Short term: Develop a methodology for designing low-impact, shared, and sustainable nighttime cities, placing the experiences of living beings at the center.
  • Mid term: Explore the scale of societal representations of the night, moving from global to local, and from collective to individual perspectives.
  • Long term: Investigate the "night-individual" system to understand both the tangible and intangible interactions that occur and how these affect individuals and society at large.

Utilizing Noctines for your projects.

Noctines is a free platform designed to support projects focused on creating and sharing stories about night time experiences. Accessible on both PC and mobile devices, it integrates seamlessly into events and nighttime consultations.

We offer occasional data extractions upon request and are open to developing customized solutions, such as tailored questionnaires, geographic targeting, and direct data access. Feel free to reach out to us at contact@lobservatoiredelanuit.fr and contribute your stories to the platform!