The project Sol is concerned with the transformation of scientific data in media that are still, for the most part, not used in this way by many areas of science. Concretely, measurements of the sun are acoustically and visually transformed. In doing so, particular value is given to maintaining a clear allocation of what one hears and sees of the data. Four different sets of data offer the base of the installation. The piece deals with medium level solar radiation, various measurements of solar wind, distribution of sunspots, as well as the middle magnetic field. All of the sets of data correlate with one another, although not in a simple linear way; instead, they show complex patterns of interaction. Since these interactions run their course over time, media that are also time-based are the most suitable for conversion, for example sound and the moving image. The measurements are recorded in part in daily rhythms, and in part in the rhythm of a solar rotation. The installation confronts central issues of art, the economy, and philosophy, which are steadily gaining in importance in an era of society’s continual move in the direction of techno-imagination. Technical representation is clearly no longer an image or a sound of a thing or a natural, generally known phenomenon, but is instead, increasingly the only way to make complex phenomenon, which we often encounter as mere data, more accessible. By transforming scientific data in a clear and comprehensible way in the new media, the project »Sol« would like to show that sounds and images can take on a logical function in the exact sciences and, like our experience of reality, are dependent on the interaction of symbolic forms and the development of the representation of the technology. The project was developed by Florian Grond, Frank Halbig, Jesper Munk Jensen, and Thorbjörn Lausten.

Website

www.sol-sol.de

Organization / Institution

ZKM