2021

REAL-TIME / INSTALLATION

Heliocene

ENTER THE ARTWORK

The Sun:
A yellow dwarf star;
A hot ball of glowing gases at the heart of our solar system, whose gravity holds everything from the biggest planets to the tiniest debris in its orbit;
A supreme ruler of upper and lower worlds charged with a solar religion of its own;
Also known as Utu, God Ra, Helios, Ara, Tonatiuh, Grian, Ri Gong Tai Yang Xing Jun, among many other names.

Despite all its glories and gifts, the Sun fails to occupy much space in my daily orbit. In contrast, Granada-based artist Natalia Stuyk, like the ancients, has taken up the Sun as the primary orienting principle of her arts practice. Her recent work, Heliocene (2021), is an exquisite and digestible audiovisual interpretation of the Sun's weather patterns, which pulls from data sets that map solar flares, solar winds, and magnetic fields. The artist describes this data as “pretty elusive.” For a brief period, while conducting preliminary research for the work, Stuyk consulted scientists who specialize in solar research, among them, Dr. Miho Janvier, a space physicist at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in France. Dr. Janvier’s website states that she works to better predict space weather, with a primary goal of “better understanding the influence of the Sun's activity on human societies.” The same could be said for Stuyk, who explores the inverse relationship—how human activity has been wholly shaped by the Sun. As scientists race to figure out how to map the Sun, Stuyk's work reflects on how the Sun has mapped onto us.

Pulling data in-real time, every few minutes, Heliocene is generative, transient, and indeterminate. The data is extracted from a number of databases, including the Space Weather Prediction Centre, which compile figures taken directly from satellites that monitor the Sun. The artist has chosen to focus on several key attributes: the kp index, or the greatest indicator of a geomagnetic storm, that is visually represented in Heliocene by the cloudy texture and intensity of the bespoke soundtrack created by the artist; the bt number, which forecasts the strength of the interplanetary magnetic field, which coincides with the angle of the magnetic field to determine the strength and visibility of the aurora; and the recording of solar flares, reflected in the density of the plasma in the solar wind and the speed is reflected in the motion. Solar flares regularly disrupt Heliocene. Over text, Stuyk writes to me, “I am only in control of the rules, the visual you see is directly connected to the Sun.” The work, like the Sun itself, is hard to describe, and by the artist's own admission is “pretty much the same as weather on earth—unpredictable & beautiful.”

Perusing her Instagram feed (@nataliastuyk) — another form of her idiosyncratic take on data visualization — followers can witness her alluring and coherent artistic style, spawning cohesion from form to aesthetic. To stare at the Sun forces one to reckon with their own place in the vastness of the universe and perhaps their own complicity in systems of ecological degradation, a break in the Lacanian “Real.” Rather than attempt to understand the Sun, Stuyk's practice serves to help us better understand our personal relationship and understanding to the Sun and the worship of it. The artist's affection for the Sun is felt viscerally and casts light on this all important force, which is imperative to all life, yet which in recent centuries has lost its spiritual dominance. Perhaps ironically, Heliocene does less to reveal any real truths or scientific facts about the Sun. Instead of using data for its evidentiary value, Stuyk utilizes it more as a raw material, imbuing it with aesthetic significance, like pigment or plaster. In this way she champions the celestial god's ineffable majesty, a grandeur which mathematics and the scientific method fail to capture and can only hope to obfuscate.

Francesca “Frankie” Altamura
[05-2021]