Lighthouses are islands of light. Their bright-sweep-beacons are regular and individual — each lighthouse has its own rhythm and syntactical structure influenced not only by its unique light-signature but by the landscape and environment in which it pulses. Lighthouses help give travellers direction, and in Woolf’s novel the lighthouse becomes the goal, unachieved, then, in its own way, achieved (‘it is finished’). The lighthouse can provide guidance and safe passage to those who witness and understand its coded information but each lighthouse also implicitly acknowledges the danger and risk all travellers face. At night, when lighthouses come into their own, they become points of safety, surrounded by the unknown, and through the hours they persistently engage in quiet dialogue with other sources of light.

Using the pulses of selected Scottish lighthouses, videoed and photographed, and language taken from Woolf’s writing as well as original text, we (an artist and a writer) will use the possibilities of lighthouses in a work which will navigate rhythm and sound, syntax and vision.

The final product, projected or screened, together with an accompanying paper, will explore the ebb and flow of dark to light, known to unknown, witnessed to conjectured.