’Magnetic Movie’ - By Semiconductor Films @ NASA BERKELEY LAB

By Semiconductor Films “A kinestatic, virtual camera effect serves to conjure an embodied presence that floats around and spies on the deserted labs where these extraordinary activities are taking place. Actual Very Low Frequency (VLF) audio recordings of magnetic fields and magnetic radiation (including recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons) are heard on the soundtrack, and the VLF data controls the movements of the animations that are approximating the invisible magnetic fields (using the same technique as that employed in All The Time In The World). The soundtrack delivers the voice-overs of several scientists attempting to describe the physical properties of these phenomena as they occur on the surfaces of the sun and the planet Mars. Semiconductor’s animations exactly illustrate the scientists’ descriptions of the fields, yet importantly they are shown occurring in incongruous places: under tables, in glass containers, and around the machines that populate the laboratory. The magnetic fields are animated in black and white and implausibly candescent shades of red, green, blue and yellow. The work exhibits a loose, episodic narrative structure (some of the voice-over descriptions start mid-sentence) ending in a climax wherein the colourful animations of magnetic waves mesh and increase in size, bulging out beyond the confines of the laboratory, finally engulfing the entire building in green wavy projections suggestive of the polar auroral lights.“ ~Lilly Husbands, Kings College London (from ’The Meta-Physics of Data’)