Sensing Remoteness Aurora

GALLERY NORTH 

LOCATION: Northumbria University NE1 8QE 

OPENING EVENT: Wednesday 10th September 5-6.30pm 

EXHIBITION RUNS: Thursday 11th to Wednesday 17th September 11am – 5pm (weekdays only). 

Having long been embedded in cultural and aesthetic imaginaries, the aurora or northern lights exemplifies the natural sublime. More recently, it has become part of popular culture as a holiday destination, a bucket-list event or a social media phenomenon with apps dedicated to monitoring the next likely occurrence. But the aurora is also one of the few ways by which we ‘experience’ space weather.  

Our planet is being affected by terrestrial weather patterns in direct and increasingly alarming ways but, unlike some other species, humans do not sense or feel the direct effects of space weather. In earlier, pre-electronic eras, this was not an issue, but we are now highly vulnerable to changes in the geo-magnetic environment caused by solar storms that affect techno-electronic infrastructures, from GPS systems (satellites in low earth orbit) to ground-based power distribution grids and telecommunications systems. 

The immersiveinstallation Aurora brings these cultural, natural and techno-scientific contexts together by using the extreme aurora event of 10/11 May 2024 as a device to reveal the complex interdependence of the spheres that together form our contemporary relationship with space and space weather. Data from three international space probes — Solar Orbiter, ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) and GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites) — are used within the installation to create a complex environment that can be experienced both as sound and as vibration, felt via the gallery’s architecture and seating as well as within the viewer/participant’s body. 

One ofthe key questions the project explores is how we might ‘experience’ space weather more directly and, in so doing, extend beyond our terrestrial, anthropocentric understanding into broader astro-ecologies that consider other natural entities and phenomena in relation to technology. If this is possible, might it shift the dial in terms of public interest in, and connection to, both the majesty and the potential jeopardy of space weather and the existential risk it could pose to our planetary futures? 

Aurora is the first public manifestation of experimental research from Sensing Remoteness —  a recently formed interdisciplinary group that brings together researchers from The Cultural Negotiation of Science group (CNoS),  the Space IDRT at Northumbria University, and Newcastle University. Current members who have contributed to Aurora are: Patrick Antolin (Plasma Physics), Jorge Boehringer (Sound Art/Sonic Intangibles, Newcastle University), Fiona Crisp (Arts/CNoS), Timothy Duckenfield (Plasma Physics), Luis Guzmán (CNoS/Space IDRT), Daniel Ratliff (Mathematics/Sonic Intangibles), Paul Vickers (Computer Science/Sonic Intangibles), Clare Watt (Space weather/Plasma Physics) and Steph Yardley (Plasma Physics).