Borealises & Australises
In collaboration with the Virtual Public Art Project we constructed an animated 3D model of the aurorae. These aurorae were then uploaded above various cities across the globe. Pictured below is Brooklyn. Anchorage and Melbourne.
Borealises came about because of the amount of light pollution we have in my hometown of Anchorage. During the winter, an unending wealth of it obscures the northern lights. It has become rare to actually see the aurora from the city limits. The original idea was to make all of the circumpolar north’s space weather systems visible through a handheld computer or smart phone, that could by-pass all of the light pollution and noise from the cities. One of those old digitally remixed get-back-to-nature-through-handhelds chestnuts (sometimes it is pretty hard for me to refer to space weather and plasma as ‘natural’). I like to think of the Borealises as the totally heavy metal weather graphics of some arcane level in a video game nobody plays anymore but still remembers the code how to get there.
E to the H