Title:
R Scuti – from the series “When the Stars Play”
Organizers: Realidades Group – Coordinators: Profª Drª Silvia Laurentiz and Prof. Dr. Marcus Vinicius Fainer Bastos.
Author members:
Beatriz Murakami
Bruna Mayer
Cássia Aranha
Clayton Policarpo
Dario Vargas
Loren Bergantini
Marcus Bastos
Sergio Venancio
Silvia Laurentiz
Rodrigo G. Vieira (astrônomo colaborador)
“R Scuti, from the series: When the stars play?” is an art installation that uses cymatics as a way of visualizing astronomical data through sound. The light curve (brightness variation over time) of the star R Scuti, available in the AAVSO database (American Association of Variable Star Observers – https://www.aavso.org/), is used to generate sounds frequencies. A loudspeaker produces sounds in a structure that contains water. It creates visual patterns from this sound vibration. A lamp reflects the waves produced in the water on the ceiling of the room.R Scuti is located in the constellation of Scutum, is a yellow supergiant star that shows variability in its brightness due to stellar pulsations. AAVSO provides more than 110,000 observations of this star, obtained over more than a century. The memory of the star’s luminous variation is transposed into sounds with the exact duration of the number of days that the installation will be exposed. A data cycle is created: the memory of the star’s luminous touch in telescopes is transformed into numerical data, computational codes translate them into sound frequencies that touch the water, and the light source reflects the water surface, returning visual patterns to the sky.
Category: Installation
Technical Specifications:
- MDF object;
- LED flashlight;
- USB extension cable;
- Amplifier with SD card containing the audio files used;
- Speaker;
- Polystyrene container with an internal mirror, to house the water and provide the effect of reflection on the ceiling;
- Sticker printed with graphs of observed star variation;
