Screening at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, until July 27th, are Brilliant Noise & Black Rain, two pieces by UK collaborative art duo Semiconductor. Composed of images taken from observations of the sun, Brilliant Noise has been presented in two versions – a three screen version and single screen version as seen at the IMA. Although the below excerpt from Vimeo gives a fair indication of the piece, at large scale, and with loud volume, Brilliant Sun is one of the most powerful video art pieces I’ve seen in some time.
Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
From the Semiconductor website: “Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun’s finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies…”
Can’t see the video? Click here to view.
