Sunbursts

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Sunbursts
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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)

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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.
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It generates constantly abundant radiation, not
only in daylight, the extremely narrow
electromagnetic waveband visible to human eyes.
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The Sun radiates profusely in many more
wavelengths, from infrared to ultraviolet and
gamma rays (aside from emitting infinite
neutrinos that cannot be perceived).
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Another extreme ultraviolet image 195 A (Fe XII,
1.5 MK)
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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.
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The Sun heats, illuminates and bathes with its
wind all the planets captive to its gravityyet
only on Earth life developed and human
consciousness is experiencing the Suns Immanence.
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The installation SUNBURSTS, using only images of
the Suns invisible radiations, will stimulate a
fresh awareness of it and render palpable our
communion with it.
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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 Suns 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.)
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Four different soundtracks will accompany the
projected films, mapping Sun data to sound and
also using the Suns music -- subaudible noise
of its surface turbulence.
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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.
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Dynamic and interactive, yet spiritual
immaterial, yet sensorially fulfilling
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experienced in real space-time, yet ellusive and
ambiguous
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this installation will recreate the glory of
light as perceived in Aghia Sophia.
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With its four projected images -- like medieval
rose windows -- looking onto the invisible Sun...
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SUNBURSTS will recall the divine status that our
self-generating star had in many past cultures,
over the millennia of human history.
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CreditsPowerPoint presentation and
photographs of the installations model
Athena TachaPhotographs of the Sun in
extreme UV Jean-Francois
HochedezSound-track samples Joshua
FriedSources of other photographs of the
Sun NASA TRACE
SXT/Yohkoh
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