Sunstar is an art/science work by Liliane Lijn, artist, and John Vallerga, astrophysicist at UC Berkeley Space Science Lab. Sunstar is a large-scale and far reaching daytime installation sited on the historic 150’ Solar Tower on Mount Wilson. Using engineered glass prisms and specially designed code, a spray of diffracted sunlight is projected to specific locations, making the solar spectrum visible just at the meeting point of earth and sky in the form of a sparkling star. Sunstar also aligns conceptually with the particular history of the Mount Wilson Observatory, since, its founder, George Ellery Hale was a solar astronomer and the spectrum is the foundation of astrophysics. On the ground in Pasadena, the projected spectrum spans about 250 yards. There will be a timetable that directs the beam to the Pasadena locations of all the other festival participants at scheduled times.
Schedule/Location
Nov. 2
11:00am— 1:00pm @ Pasadena Civic Center Robinson Memorial
1:00—3:00pm @ Pasadena Central Park
3:00—4:30pm @ Pasadena City College
4:30—5:59pm @ ArtCenter North Campus (Lida St.)
Nov. 3
½ hour performances
11am @ Pasadena Civic Center Robinson Memorial, repeated hourly
11:30am @ Pasadena Memorial Park and The Armory, repeated hourly
Nov. 4
11:00am—4:57pm @ Pasadena Memorial Park and The Armory
Nov. 5
11am—2pm @ Pasadena City College
2:00—4:56pm @ ArtCenter North Campus (Lida St.)
Nov. 6
11:00am—2:00pm @ ArtCenter North Campus (Lida St.)
2:00—4:55pm @ Pasadena City College
Nov. 7 + Nov. 8
10:00am—10:30am @ Caltech Athenaeum lawn
10:30am—11:30am @ Millikan Library Study Lounge — 9th floor
11:30am—12:00pm @ Caltech Athenaeum lawn
12:00pm—1:00pm @ Pasadena Memorial Park and The Armory
1:00pm—1:30pm @ ArtCenter North Campus
1:30pm—2:00pm @ Pasadena City College
2:00pm—2:30pm @ ArtCenter North Campus
2:30pm—3:00pm @ Pasadena Memorial Park and The Armory
3:00pm—3:30pm @ Millikan Library Study Lounge — 9th floor
3:30pm—4:00pm @ Music Center
4:00pm—4:30pm @ Pasadena City College
4:30pm—4:54pm @ @ ArtCenter North Campus
Nov. 9
11:00am—4:53pm @ Pasadena City College
Nov. 10
10:00am—2:00pm @ Rose Bowl, Lot H
2:00pm—3:00pm @ Pasadena Civic Center, Jackie Robinson Memorial
3:00pm—4:00pm @ Pasadena Memorial Park and The Armory
4:00pm—4:52pm @ Lake Avenue Congregational Church
Nov. 11
10:00am—4:51pm @ Pasadena Memorial Park and The Armory
1:00pm—2:30pm @ concert presented by wasteLAnd: Sun Day Star
Requests for appointments can be made to concerts@mtwilson.edu.
Include the time you’d like to see the beam and your location’s address, or geographic coordinates if you prefer. Make sure you can see the Mount Wilson ridgeline from there — just to the right of the cluster of TV towers!
About the Artists
Liliane Lijn was born in New York and lives in London since 1967. Internationally exhibited since the 1960s, her works are held in numerous collections including Tate London, British Museum, V&A and FNAC in Paris. Lijn works across media – kinetic sculpture, film, text, performance and collage – to explore language, mythology and the relationship between light and matter. Utilizing highly original combinations of industrial materials and artistic processes, Lijn is recognized for pioneering the interaction of art, science, technology, eastern philosophy and female mythology.
In 2005, Lijn was ACE NASA, Leonardo Network A-i-R at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC, Berkeley, where she began a collaboration with astronomer John Vallerga that has resulted in their Sunstar project.
Currently, Lijn is A-i-R at Universe 02, APC Laboratory, Paris. Lijn’s current solo and group museum exhibitions include: 2018 Spotlight, Tate Britain, Cosmic Dramas, Rodeo Gallery, Piraeus;Action <-> Reaction, 100 Years of Kinetic Art, Kunsthal Rotterdam; Signals, kurimanzutto, New York. Converse Column, a nine-meter high kinetic text work commissioned by Leeds University to be completed January 2019.
Liliane Lijn is represented by Rodeo. For more information: http://www.lilianelijn.com/
John Vallerga is an astrophysicist at SSL (Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley). His expertise is the development of very sensitive photon detectors for NASA space astronomy missions where he has participated on projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Horizons mission that recently visited Pluto.
Press
Los Angeles Magazine
Hyperallergic
Explore Related Taxonomies → Naturalia, Observatories, Projection Devices