SonicSENSE: SolarSonic (2010)

solarSonic by sonicSENSE created with Barney Haynes in collaboration with Mechatronic’s graduate students in the Digital Art New Media program at the University of California Santa Cruz. solarSonic is a site-specific interactive art installation in Tenerife, Spain. Using physical computing to materialize solar wind data into audible sculptures with processing animation and software to visualize a month’s worth of solar wind data parsed from UCLA’s research in upper atmosphere and space physics. The conductive corridor contours shift in response to movement generated by air current or viewers walking between the walls and triggers sound when the two walls touch. The mirror-like quality of the corridor surface reflects the sky into the interior space of the gallery. Rectangular sheets of speaker film were attached to the gallery windows to produce high frequency sound when the viewer blows on a sensor or moves through the exhibition space.

Installed at the Sala de Exposiciones del Parque García Sanabria in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, this project was created in collaboration with OpenLab at UCSC and Digital Arts and New Media MFA candidates Lyès Belhocine, Elizabeth Travelslight, Levi Goldman, Kyle McKinley, and Andre Marquetti, Ph.D. candidate in Music.