Spectral Constellations: Exhibited at NEoN Digital Arts Festival, Dundee

Exhibition Dates: 10 November - 23 December
Exhibition Venue: Mills Observatory, Dundee

Spectral Constellations is a series of generative animations, driven by scientific data of young stars. This data, collected by scientists using a method called Spectroscopy, creates an understanding of structures around distant young stars, where gas and dust come together to form planets. Scientists study the light this matter emits, using prisms to split it into its constituent wavelengths, revealing its elemental make-up. By analysing this data over time, spatial formations of the matter can be decoded.

Semiconductor have worked with this spectral data as a physical material, translating it into rings of light that resemble the gradiated discs of planetary and stellar formations. As the data ebbs and flows it introduces a sense of form and motion, waveforms merge and interfere revealing patterns and rhythms, and engage our human tendency towards pattern recognition. The fragmented LED matrices provide partial windows from which the spectral data shifts and shimmers to create a raw visual experience.

For NEoN Digital Arts Festival Spectral Constellations is installed site-specifically at Mills Observatory, Dundee.

Spectral Constellations was commissioned through a residency with the Stellar Nursery astrophysics group and DJCAD at the University of Dundee via the Science and Technology Facilities Council projects The planet-disk connection and Reading between the lines.

About the Artists

Semiconductor is artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt who are known for their artworks which explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lenses of science and technology, questioning our place in the Universe.