Onlookers snap photos of the Sea Mirror — Image source: Contemporist.com
Can you have aquatic art without water? Sure… why not?
Yann Kersale, an artist who uses light as his medium, recently installed a stunning suspended art piece in Sydney, Australia. The Sea Mirror, or Miroir de Mer, juts out from the roof of the One Central Park development, kind of like a glowing diving board. The exhibit is lined with hundreds of heliostats (rotating mirrors commonly used to collect solar energy). But these heliostats stats aren’t reflecting sunlight — rather, each one reflects the light from its respective LEDs to create a dazzling display of glimmering colors.
Each of the 320 mirrored heliostats has nine color-changing LEDs, amounting to 2880 LEDs in all. Every heliostat also has its own custom URL and can be remotely moved. As a result, the heliostats bend and twist to create undulating patterns, much like the glittering sun reflecting off of ocean waves. The art piece currently runs through four different sequences that are supposed to represent the changing colors of the four seasons.
The Sea Mirror in Sydney, Australia — Image source: Inhabitat.com
From below, it looks almost as though a heavily pixelated plasma TV has been submerged underwater. It invites viewers on the street to imagine what life must be like as a marine animal, where all you have to do is look up to see a stunning display of sunlight across the surface of the water.
At night the heliostats put on a stunning spectacle, but during the day the serve a much more practical purpose. A scheduled program automatically adjusts the heliostats to reflect sunlight into the atrium of the nearby building, bathing the interior in natural sunlight.
Close-up of the Sea Mirror — Image source: Inhabitat.com
There may not be an ounce of water involved in the project, but the Sea Mirror nonetheless captures the beauty of the ocean illuminated by the warming sun. Kersale explained,
Sydney’s harbour is mythical for the sailing universe and being a sailor myself, the opportunity to capture the sea in this way and reflect it indirectly on the heliostat, constitutes the grounds for this geo-poetical signal.
A rotating series of images of reflections of the sun on the water will be take shape via lights on the heliostat. The variations will be in relation to the shades and colour tones of Sydney’s harbour. It will not be a live projection but a capture of sea substance and light sparkles on site, which will then be worked on. They can relate to seasons or can be a game of opposites; ie. the light emanating from a summer sun in the middle of winter.
It is important to understand that the installation is an allegory, a symbol of the sea in the city.
The Sea Mirror doing what it does best: looking gorgeous — Image source: Inhabitat.com
What do you think of Kersale’s art piece? Do you think the moving heliostats capture the beauty of glittering ocean waves, or do you have a completely different aesthetic experience? Does it remind you of the millions of lights that compose the Milky Way? Do you think it looks like pixel artwork like something out of a video game? Let us know in the comments!
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