Helios 2024 is a celebration of the sun in its phase of solar maximum by audiovisual artist Dan Tapper. The exhibition gathers solar data from space organizations, as well as utilizing Tapper’s DIY devices that encode solar data into lo-fi playable records and reveal radio spectrum from the earth’s ionosphere and space.
The data captured ranges from realtime images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to quantitative mappings of daily sunspots accessed as spreadsheets of data. These images and datasheets are analyzed to extract key information about the sun and to create virtual simulations of the sun alongside new sounds and images.
Tapper’s DIY devices capture a less cosmic radio soundscape. Coils of wire translating radio naturally produced by the earth’s ionosphere into clicks, crackles, pops and hums. This radio spectrum includes a clicking chorus of lightning from all around the world as well as the ionospheres interaction with the sun at high levels of solar activity.
Helios 2024, moves between directly representational sound and imagery of the sun and more abstract experimentation, this interplay lets us sit in a transient space, imaging and imagining the sun through meditative static.
Helios 2024 also includes 2 workshops around transforming data from space into images and sound. The first workshop in the series is available here.
January 14 to April 1, 2024. Open 10 am to 4 pm Thursday to Monday.
NAISA North Media Arts Centre, 313 Highway 124, South River, Ontario
