Solar Powered Modern Stonehenge

Solar-powered "modern Stonehenge" lets audience create nightly performance over Internet

In a collaboration between the community and the sun, Solar Collector gathers human expression and solar energy during the day, then brings them together each night in a performance of flowing light.

Twelve shimmering metal shafts rise at surprising angles from a grassy hill. They hang over the landscape, creating a graceful curve that appears to unfold for passing motorists.

The shafts are part of Solar Collector, a sculpture created by artists Matt Gorbet, Rob Gorbet, and Susan LK Gorbet as a commission for the Region of Waterloo. Set in front of the Regional Operations Centre in Cambridge, Ontario, the sculpture is solar-powered and interactive, inviting the community to choreograph its nightly performance via the web.

Each shaft has three sets of lights, along with three solar panels. Their angles reflect the angles of the sun through the year. The tallest shaft is perpendicular to the sun at winter solstice, when the sun is low in the sky. The flattest shaft faces the high sun at summer solstice.

During the day, the solar panels collect the sun's energy in a battery within each shaft. At the same time, the Solar Collector website [link] collects light compositions - patterns in light that are created by the community through a simple web interface.

"Since it's public art, it was important to us that the piece be accessible to the public," says co-artist Susan LK Gorbet. "Because it's set in an industrial area, we used the internet to create a collaboration with the community. People can compose in light on the web with a set of simple sliders."

Each night at dusk, a performance begins of all the compositions collected that day. "The light patterns are based on sine waves - the mathematics behind sunlight and the seasons," explains co-artist Rob Gorbet. "As we explored the geometry of solar energy, we were struck by how beautiful it was, and we wanted to make it visible. The angles and lengths of the shafts, the light patterns - the entire sculpture is based on the sun's movement."

After the patterns collected each day are displayed, the performance moves on to a series composed collaboratively from all the patterns ever created. The length of the performance is a reflection of the weather and the seasons, as the shafts use up their energy and fade out late in the evening, one by one.

Solar Collector launches on the summer solstice - Saturday, June 21st

Full press release...[link]
See more photos of the Solar Collector ...[link]