Data as Culture - Art that uses data as a material
4-channel digital film, 28 minutes with sound.
- Paradigm 1 Sun Drawings
- Paradigm 2 Twin Suns
- Paradigm 3 Site
- Paradigm 4 Eclipse
Commissioned by Data as Culture at the ODI as part of an Evidence & Foresight online artists’ residency.
How do we know our nearest star? Inspired by the concept of digital twinning models, Rohini Devasher has created a series of ‘analogue Sun twins’. One Hundred Thousand Suns takes us on a journey through the vast amounts of data held at the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory in India. The Kodaikanal Observatory is one of only two observatories in the world that has over 120 years of data about the Sun and its influence on Earth and space. Drawing on archives of over 157,000 images, along with observations, interviews with eclipse chasers and eclipse data she collected herself in 2009, 2019 and 2021, Rohini explores the relationships between observation and experience, and information, data and truth.
Photographs of drawings of the solar disk and images of glass photographic plates held at the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory reproduced here with permission and courtesy of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics Archives, Bangalore.
The artwork was accessible to all by appointment from Friday 6 May 2022 for 12 months.