A Catalog of Extinct Experience

What if streetlights could respond to ambient moonlight, dimming and brightening each month as the moon cycles through its phases? On clear nights when the moon is full, streetlights might even turn off completely. First, we could save as much as 80–90 percent of the energy used in streetlighting. And we would bring back the experience of moonlight and stargazing to urban areas.

Civil Twilight is a Design Collective working to implement lunar-sensitive streetlights. The human eye, with its com­ple­mentary systems of rods and cones, evolved to adapt to both full-sun days and moonless nights. “We can see an incredibly broad range of intensities,” says Civil Twilight member Anton Willis . “The difference between sunlight and starlight is something like a hundred thousand orders of magnitude.” Bright moonlight is in the transitional part of this range, when both rods and cones are active. “It’s a natural biological benchmark,” Willis says, “because we evolved with it.”

Silbo Gomero or Gomeran Whistle, also known as "El Silbo", is a whistled language spoken by inhabitants of La Gomera in the Canary Islands to communicate across the deep ravines and narrow valleys that radiate through the island. Watch here. Invented by the original inhabitants of the island and "spoken" also on el Hierro, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria, Silbo was adapted to Castilian Spanish and adopted by the Castilian settlers in the 16th century. By 1976, Silbo barely remained on el Hierro until local government required Gomeran children to study it in school.