ABOUT SOLARCIRCUS

There are three main components to solarCircus.  The solarCircus project is not one particular “thing” but rather a collection of related creative activities: hands-on workshops, nomadic solar-powered installations, and online performances.

1)    DIY Solar Sculptures workshops: The artist has already run two DIY Solar Sculpture workshops with funding from Chicago’s Museum for Contemporary Art and Northern Illinois University. Images and information can be found at solarcircus.org.  These three-hour courses provide an introduction to how solar cells work, and also provide a hands-on demonstration of how to “hack” a solar toy to re-use the moving parts in one-of-a-kind kinetic objects.  Like the installation, the workshops provide an informal and fun context for eco-dialogue.  Future workshops will attempt to engage students in creating one-of-a-kind objects for deployment outside for a short performance. (More info: http://www.mcachicago.org/programs/prog_detail.php?id=472)

2)    Large-scale artist-produced portable solar art installation: The aim would be to have a large, ever-expanding, 10 x 10 foot sun-powered installation that would be deployed differently in each context.  At present, the artist is still experimenting with various solar toy kits.  The “Walking King Crab” has been hacked down into a form viewable here: http://solarcircus.org/?page_id=28.  The artist requests funding from Rhizome to be able to experiment on a much larger scale with solar toy technology.

3)    Online performances: Live performances will be broadcast using both sun power and good old batteries.  The website might also feature performances conducted using nonrenewable energy such as coal-powered electric lamps.  An online collection of various SolarCircus events will provide documentation of the live events and also attempt to involve online viewers in the curious objects and eco-dialogue.

There would be two overall goals to this project:

1)    Foster eco-dialogue: The artist would attempt to interest the general public in solar power via engaging hands-on activities and/or public spectacle.  Public deployment of the SolarCircus in various urban and rural locations could enable casual conversation, allowing the artist to engage passerby in dialogue about solar energy and renewable energy resources.

2)    Create expanded opportunities for artistic experiments with technology in public space: The artist’s prior work in engaging the public in ecological conversation has been mostly indoors where computers and display devices exhibited custom software that visualized real-time energy usage.  The artist looks forward to pushing her work to move literally outside—with a little help from the sun.  Although the artist plans to continue her visualization experiments, she is eager to begin exploring the possibilities of art powered through renewable resources.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Tiffany Holmes explores the potential of art and technology to promote environmental stewardship.  Recent work includes a commission for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications where sequences of experimental animations visualize real time energy loads.  Her paper detailing this work, “Eco-visualization: Combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption,” won a Best Paper award at Creativity and Cognition 2007.  Other commissions include the creation of a street-level video installation to raise awareness about the perils of drinking bottled water in Chicago, a city with the top-ranked tap in the USA.  In March of 2008, Holmes launched “World Offset,” a website that invites viewers to submit carbon offset commitments to highlight the problems of curtailment-based solutions to global warming.  In April of 2009, Holmes premiered darkSky, a new interactive electricity visualization at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in a UBS 12 x 12 New Artists/New Work exhibition.