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This Installation Lets You Look at the Sun Without Burning Your Eyes

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As children, our parents warned us not to look directly at the sun. Taking this to heart, artist :vtol:, the gadgeteer responsible for musical tattoos and mind-controlled magnets, has put together a creative workaround for this clash between caution and curiosity in Solarman, an audiovisual installation that immerses viewers in realtime data from the center of our solar system.

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Created with frequent collaborators Julia Borovaya, Edward Rakhmanov, and the Tesis Sun Investigation Laboratory, Solarman is lit by an 8 x 8 LED grid that wavers and flashes according to information from a satellite observing the sun. A 12-channel sound system immerses viewers sonically, while they sit in a chair outfitted with muscle stimulators that directly interact with their bodies, creating a fully immersive experience. The data for all these interactions comes from the GOES15 satellite, which measures the sun’s X-radiation flux in watts per square meter, before the algorithm converts it to output for viewers’ eyes, ears, and body.

The data is, “being converted into streams of sound, light and electric discharges, thus allowing a spectator to experience in more intensive and evident way the influence of the main luminary of the solar system.,” :vtol: writes in the project description. Perhaps if Solarman had been around when we were kids, our curiosity wouldn’t have gotten the better of us. 

See more of :vtol:’s work on his website here.

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