The making of a Sun-Space Modulator

In this, final section, I hope to piece together the threads from the journey so far.

The idea behind my project is to take natural light phenomena that we might encounter everyday and pull them out of our usual experience so that they can be appreciated in isolation. An example of this type of phenomenon is the photograph of Amsterdam Airport where just for a few moments, sunlight caught the edge of a pane of glass casting a vivid spectrum across the floor. The spectrum could only be seen from a close range of angles around where the photo was taken from. From anywhere else nothing was distinguishable. It would've been so easy to miss had I not have been studying light phenomena and not had ten minutes to wait. This event was caused by a man-made construction but a rainbow is natures equivalent. It is this type of singularity that I want to remove from everyday life and give centre stage.

As I wrote about in the enlightenment section, the purpose of this is too give an insight into what light is both for me and the spectator. Throughout the year a few simple ideas have been going through my head. The main theme has been the movement of sunlight through space for which I picture light through an open tread staircase casting a shadow which moves imperceptabley slowly, changing form constantly. No two moments will be the same, you would have to wait six months to see the same shadow again. The other has been of the spectacular, for me this has to be rooted in natural phenomena. I can't see the value in any effect or phenomena which doesn't have integrity and this has filtered alot of things out of my work.

The Sun-Space Modulator

In the sun-space modulator sunlight will be filtered through a series of layers onto a mist.

The installation is designed as a panel, like a skylight, to be installed above the heads of the viewer. Three layers modulate the light in different ways.

The first layer is an array of mirror elements, 529 of them each orientated to catch the sunlight at a given moment. Below the mirror array is a kind of grid which acts as a selective venetian blind only letting a small amount of light through at a given time. Each hole through the grid is orientated slightly differently to allow light to pass through at a specific range of times in the sun's calender. The third layer is an array of prisms each one aligned to the opening in the grid above. These work to disperse the light into the spectrum. The modulated light will then be displayed on a fine cloud of mist and should appear as a series of rainbows each on with a different orientation.

Most the following information is copied from the 'current work' page.

Images and animations of the grid are posted on the right.

Some initial tests of light through the apparatus is posted below. The mist was created using an unltrasonic humidifier which ionizes water into a fog using ultrasonic frequency waves.

Photo to show the shading effect of the grid.	First test rig
The light effect through the grid onto water.	The light effect through the grid onto a fine mist.

Images of the prism array and the housing for the apparatus are posted below. The prism array is arranged so that light through the hole above hits the prism at 60° to the normal. This creates a dispersion of 35.3°. Information on how this is worked out can be found at scienceworld.wolfram.com and I have scanned my working here. I chose this angle as it allows room for error and creates a strong spectrum in which all the colours should appear as in Goethe's explaination.

The grid	Grid
Prism array	Prism array elevation
Plan of the prism array	Perspective of the apparatus and housing

The complete setup (pictured in the bottom right of the table above) is three metres tall and one metre square. The structure will be blacked out with a thick curtain. A sketch of the setup is posted below

A quick sketch of the setup

Interaction comes through moving the mirror array in two axis of rotation. Due to the size of the grid I will only be able to create a mirror array for the centre 50 holes These will create a 'moment' when they are all aligned to catch the sun and direct it through the array to make a mass of rainbows through the fog.

Conclusion

The Sun-Space Modulator brings together the aspects of light as information, the analogy of enlightenment and interaction.

The modulator uses the simplist and most common refractive form, the prism, to split light. Most of us have seen these in physics lessons and been moderately interested, the idea of the Sun-Space Modulator is to use the scale of the piece with it's hundreds of prisms at different orientations to allow fresh insight into the phenomenon.

The installation can either be taken at face value, or become a place for contemplating the magic of sunlight with it's ever changing hues and angles. I hope that it affords people the opportunity to look deeper into the wonder of light and sunlight, perhaps to learn something more of it's nature, to look on it in a new way. I want to give the opportunity to stop and contemplate what is all around us, all the time. To take the things we take for granted, sunlight, the sky and weather and give it centre stage so that it can be seen appreciated in isolation. The aim is to inspire a new wonder and awe of light and it's majestic character. Nothing more, nothing less.