HOME

WORK

 

The Firmament Cabinet - initial proposal for the Wigan Enigma public art commission, June 2007
“Wigan has more hours of sunshine than Milan” Wigan Enigma brief notes
With this in mind we want to make something that relates to this fact and utilises this natural resource that Wigan enjoys so many hours of, hence a camera obscura. A camera obscura (latin: darkened chamber) is essentially a dark room with a small hole in one wall that allows light to pass through projecting an image of what is outside onto the opposite internal wall.
In Firmament Cabinet the viewer will walk around a semi-dark corridor, the lower half of the structure will be fabricated from glass allowing the viewer to find their way, until they reach a darkened, hexagonal chamber. In the chamber there will be a dish with a real-time projection of the sky above; moving clouds, pure blue sky, vapour trails, whatever is up there at the time.
The upper half of the structure will be constructed from polished steel or aluminium. The outer surface will be engraved with a series of maps of the night sky, ‘star maps’. These star maps will be generated using software that creates exact night sky renders from specific dates in the past. The engraved star maps on the Firmament Cabinet will relate to dates important to the history and population of Wigan. The use of this diagrammatic element within the work bridges a gap between the history of the town and its current moment.
Therefore at night it will function as a sculptural object relating to the night sky when there is not enough light for it to work as a camera. Thus the Firmament Cabinet always relates to the stars: In daylight hours our star, the sun, in the present and during the night to other stars in the universe at varying points in history.
Brian McClave and Gavin Peacock. June 2007
 
example star map from starchart.sourceforge.net