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Sunbursts
A multimedia installation
By:
ATHENA TACHA, sculptor (Washington, D.C.)
JEAN-FRANCOIS HOCHEDEZ, solar physicist (Brussels)
With digital music by
JOSHUA FRIED, composer (New York)
and digital films of the Sun by
BOGDAN NICULA, electronics engineer (Brussels)
The Sun is a colossal sphere of hydrogen and helium gas that holds itself together
through the miraculous balance of its thermonuclear pressure and the pull of gravity.
It generates constantly abundant radiation, not only in “daylight”, the
extremely narrow electromagnetic waveband visible to human eyes.
The Sun radiates profusely in many more wavelengths, from infrared to ultraviolet
and gamma rays (aside from emitting infinite neutrinos that cannot be perceived).
Another extreme ultraviolet image: 195 A (Fe XII, 1.5 MK)
Solar magnetic activity (Sun spots, flares, coronal ejections), which peaked around the
year 2001, is one of the most important cosmic cycles in our local universe.
The Sun heats, illuminates and bathes with its wind all the planets captive to its gravity;
yet only on Earth life developed and human consciousness is experiencing the Sun’s Immanence.
The installation SUNBURSTS, using only images of the Sun’s invisible radiations,
will stimulate a fresh awareness of it and render palpable our communion with it.
In the middle of a darkened interior, a fog machine will emit
bursts of thick fog at regular intervals. It will be surrounded
by four large voile screens, placed diagonally to the walls.
(See next slide.)
Four digital video projectors installed at the corners of the
ceiling will project towards the center, onto the screens and
through them on the fog cloud, time-lapse films of the Sun’s
activity photographed by the Extreme UV Imaging Telescope of
SoHO. Each projector will show the activity of one year, from
2000 to 2003 in a different color,
e.g., blue, green, yellow and red.
The images of the films will be focused on each screen, and
then will blend their colors on the central fog as unfocussed
overlapping circles.
(See next slide.)
Four different soundtracks will accompany the projected films, mapping Sun data to sound
and also using the Sun’s “music” -- subaudible noise of its surface turbulence.
Spectators will be able to walk around the four screens as well as inside
them, projecting their partial shadows on the screens or on the fog.
Dynamic and interactive, yet spiritual; immaterial, yet sensorially fulfilling; …
…experienced in real space-time, yet ellusive and ambiguous: …
…this installation will recreate the glory of light as perceived in Aghia Sophia.
With its four projected images -- like medieval rose windows -- looking onto the invisible Sun...
SUNBURSTS will recall the divine status that our self-generating
star had in many past cultures, over the millennia of human history.
Credits:
PowerPoint presentation and photographs of the installation’s model:
Athena Tacha
Photographs of the Sun in extreme UV:
Jean-Francois Hochedez
Sound-track samples:
Joshua Fried
Sources of other photographs of the Sun:
NASA
TRACE
SXT/Yohkoh