Hillary Wiedemann

Beginning in February 2018, SpaceX has regularly launched hundreds of Starlink satellites into low orbit in order to create a “broadband internet system to meet the needs of consumers across the globe.” While the satellite network can provide internet access to subscribers living in remote areas, these also create a visual disruption in viewing, documenting, and studying the cosmos, and have stirred much upset among amateur and professional astrophotographers. Using images sourced from the public domain, I have translated and collaged these images with retroreflective thread, in order to accentuate patterns and create a new set of potential constellations and galaxies.

Beginning in February 2018, SpaceX has regularly launched hundreds of Starlink satellites into low orbit in order to create a “broadband internet system to meet the needs of consumers across the globe.” While the satellite network can provide internet access to subscribers living in remote areas, these also create a visual disruption in viewing, documenting, and studying the cosmos, and have stirred much upset among amateur and professional astrophotographers. Using images sourced from the public domain, I have translated and collaged these images with retroreflective thread, in order to accentuate patterns and create a new set of potential constellations and galaxies.

The View From Above/Below
Heaven Gallery March 12 - May 2, 2021
Hillary Wiedemann, Carla Fisher Schwartz, Erika Lynne Hanson.

With the array of scientific and cartographic data made increasingly available through the public domain, our collective vision has expanded. The immediacy of digital technologies allows us to enter a remote landscape many miles, sometimes even light-years away, while physically remaining at home. Using information accessed through open-source media, such as Google Earth, United States National Park video feeds, and NASA satellite imagery, the work in The View from Above/Below alludes to our desire to extend our own vision, proposing new perspectives for viewing place and space.

The work in this exhibition draws upon intuitively human processes rooted in the desire to understand our surroundings near and far, and to explore the unknown. These impulses lead to discoveries that are enmeshed in contemporary systems of surveillance, often resulting in views previously unimaginable, and often not entirely explainable or comfortable.

Emulations of the sunsets as they would be visible from the eight planets of our solar system, accounting for the unique atmosphere of each planet.

The on/off sequence is timed relative to the duration of a day on each individual planet

Installation views of group exhibit Islands of the Sun, with Soheila Azadi and Jeremiah Jones. Curated by George William Price at the Chicago Artists Coalition

Installation views of group exhibit, Slow Zoom, with Arianna Petrich and Rose Sexton at Fernwey Gallery, Chicago.

Emulations of the sunsets as they would be visible from the various planets of our solar system, accounting for the unique atmosphere of each planet. 

On May 19, 2005, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover “Spirit” captured a series of images of the setting sun on the rover’s 489th day on Mars, known as Sol 489. The resulting widely publicized and sublime image was of a glowing blue sunset with a red sky further afield. The panoramic image was generated using color filters and a mosaic of images. The result was a simulation of what the human eye would see if one were viewing the sunset on Mars.

Here I have taken one of the original black and white images from that day and paired it with a black and white image of the sunset on Earth - on the very same day. Two views of the same sunset on different planets.

On November 5, 2010, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover “Opportunity” took a series of photos of the setting sun. 17 of these images were then used to create an animation of a blue sunset, using color filters to simulate what the human eye would see if one were viewing the sunset on Mars. The images with glitches were removed from the series and images from a prior day were interpolated to smooth the motion of the animation.

This installation presents all 25 images, including glitches, from that November Day, labeled Sol 2411 for Opportunity Rover’s 2411th day on the planet Mars.

Digital video projection, looped, dimensions variable

On the Winter Solstice of 2012, I recorded digital video and photographs of the sun from the summit of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, at the astronomical observatories there, nearly 14,000 feet above sea level.  
I wanted to capture the sun’s light from that particular day at that particular place, in the hope of recreating the experience in both digital projection and printed images. Knowing full well the impossibility of such an outcome, I pointed the camera directly into the sun and recorded.
Possessing the Visible is a selected result of this, a recreation of the few brightest minutes from the shortest day of the year. 

Looped digital video projection, dimensions variable.

On the Winter Solstice of 2012, I recorded digital video and photographs of the sun from the summit of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, at the astronomical observatories there, nearly 14,000 feet above sea level.
I wanted to capture the sun’s light from that particular day at that particular place, in the hope of recreating the experience in both digital projection and printed images. Knowing full well the impossibility of such an outcome, I pointed the camera directly into the sun and recorded.
Possessing the Visible, another video projection, is a selected result of this, a recreation of the few brightest minutes from the shortest day of the year. 

When projecting this video in my studio I was interested in repeating the gesture of recording the light of the solstice. This time the goal was capturing the new “projected sun” as an aesthetic repossession of an otherwise impossible capture of the real sun.  An added layer of imagining was created by the technical interaction of camera and projector.  The camera sensor clashes with the RGB light of the projector, causing further distortion, a visible expression of the process of memory itself which ironically distorts reality in each iteration of the memory.
Here camera, projector, and intense sunlight conspire to create a re-imagined Winter Solstice.

On the Winter Solstice of 2012, I recorded digital video and photographs of the sun from the observatories of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. I wanted to capture the sun’s light from that particular day at that particular place, in the hopes of recreating the experience in a digital projection and printed images.

Blue of Distance is a diptych of the sun - images from that Winter Solstice, captured through a telescope, and printed on sun sensitive paper (Cyanotype). 

For one, I exposed the print on cyanotype to the sun for the duration of the Vernal Equinox of 2013, and then fixed it, an attempt to bring together two notable times of the solar year, the winter solstice - a time of darkness, with the Vernal Equinox - a time of equal parts light and dark. This time is then fixed in print.

For the other, I exposed the print to the sun’s light and allowed it to continue to change over the course of time, a reminder of the ever fleeting and changing moments of time.  The print remains unfixed, and will continue to change.

Digital video, 19 minutes, 
dimensions variable

My father told me a story of his own father, an avid backyard astronomer, spending years planning and constructing his own telescope. Although my grandfather rarely spoke to him about the details, and did not involve him in the project, my father remembers his spending months of evening and weekend hours in the basement of their home, perfecting the glass reflecting mirror, the main component of the telescope. To accomplish the task he embedded the glass blank in tar on a barrel top, and would circle slowly round and round with a secondary piece of glass and compound to grind and polish it evenly, taking measurements until it was just right. He then sent the polished glass away to be silvered, and upon its return, set up the telescope in the backyard. My father told me that he remembered seeing the craters of the moon for the first time in this mirror, and the realization of that image has remained embedded in his mind forever. To my grandfather's disappointment, he discovered that the curve of the mirror was off by .0001mm (or some such number). He planned to regrind the lens to perfection, but passed away before he could do so, when he was 54 and my father 17.

My father gave me this mirror when I started my training in the field of glass, and began learning how to polish glass with more efficient tools. I never met my grandfather, but his fascination with the universe has been passed down to me through my own father. There are traces of old polishing compound on the sides of the mirror, and the silver facing has faded in parts. I have grandfather’s original notes and sketches of the telescope, and they are covered in his fingerprints of polishing compound.

In this video, I have set up my grandfather’s telescope mirror to reflect the path of the sun, which is then captured by the lens of a digital camera. The reflected image of the sun and the path that it travels is shown in real time, and the intensity of the light causes the camera to glitch is such a way that the sun’s light it transformed into blackness. Time seems to move slowly in the video, yet it contains fleeting moments of beauty and uncertainty, the image is as imperfect as memory itself.

Installation images of solo exhibit at MacArthur B. Arthur Gallery, Oakland, CA
March 2-April 1, 2012

From the exhibit's press release:

An afterimage is defined as a visual sensation that remains after the initial stimulus is gone. The works in Afterimage stem from  inquiries into the phenomenology of perception and the lingering sense impressions of memory. Here the sun plays many roles – a marker of time, a source of light, a determiner of place, and through its absence, the seed of an acute awareness of space. While distinctly aware of the impossibility of recreating the sense-experience of the sun, the works in Afterimage focus on a sensual residue and/or constant state of perceptual remembering. 

In Theory of Colour, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe states, “every image occupies a certain space on the retina, and of course a greater or less space in proportion as the object is seen near or at a distance. If we shut the eyes immediately after looking at the sun we shall be surprised to find how small the image it leaves appears.” The works mines this phenomenological incongruity – the actual image, its afterimage, and the memory of the image. This slippage continues from true recall into memories of memories.

Afterimage conjures something between two forms of spectra – that which pertains to phenomena of light, and that of the incorporeal.

3 channel digital video projection, looped,
variable dimensions

This 3-channel digital video installation piece is a compilation of Red, Green, and Blue images of the sun taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) over the course of 1234 days (at the time of this exhibit, the duration of time I had lived in California).

The composite colorful image forms the brightest light. Through viewer interaction of walking in the sun’s projected light, colorful shadows emerge, breaking up the spectrum of the light.

Acrylic, 24 inch diameter x 1/8 inch depth

Afterimage is a play on vision and memory.

The installation consists of a simple geometric circle, yellow acrylic, glowing at the edges due to its material properties. When stared at for a minute or so, a blue afterimage also becomes visible. Both images, real and imagined, exist and fade in memory.
  

Retroreflective fabric,
36 x 36 inches

Gray Area is composed of stretched retro-reflective material, a fabric embedded with thousands of glass microspheres. The experience of the piece is distinct to the viewer’s position relative to the light and object. Unexpected colors and shadows emerge as the viewer walks back and forth. What appears at first as a simple geometric square becomes a lively interactive experience dependent upon the viewer’s movements.

Digital video, 18:30 looped, 12 inch diameter

This video installation piece is a compilation of images of the sun taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) over the course of 1234 days, the number of days I had lived in California at the time of this exhibit.

The video shows the rotation of the sun, its oscillation in size relative to its distance from the satellite, rotating sunspots, and glitches from the satellite’s camera.

Here it is a distinct marker of time, captured and made visible.

Destruction/Distraction, 2010. Video projection with audio, retroglo thread, mixed media.

Installation in the group exhibit (...) at MacArthur B. Arthur, Oakland, CA.

Digital video, 1 hour 44 minutes, 
variable dimensions

Sans Soleil, a 1983 film directed by Chris Marker, incorporates verbal ruminations on the nature of human memory: its nuances, fallibility, and perceptual shifts over time, with brief visual scenes from around the world. The film opens with a quotation from TS Eliot:

“Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place”

Inspired by the themes in Marker’s film, I have attempted to disperse memory even further by recording through diffraction grating, a video of the original Sans Soleil in its entirety. In Sans Soleil (Diffracted), I have removed the audio from the original film, and literally broken down its image into a projected visible spectrum as seen through a peephole. The result is an abstracted color field, a visible metaphor for the inability of memory to capture the entirety of an experience. The projection is a subtle suggestion of the original film, a recollection of a memory of a memory.

Fraunhofer lines are dark gaps within the visible solar spectrum. They are named after Joseph von Fraunhofer, inventor of the spectroscope, an instrument used to study properties of light. In 1814, Fraunhofer discovered 574 dark lines within the solar spectrum. Scientists later determined that each line corresponded to a specific chemical element absorbed by the outer layers of the sun. Today there are several thousand known gaps, still called Fraunhofer lines in his honor.

Here, I have transcribed Fraunhofer’s original 574 invisible lines into a musical score, played by a “solar powered” music box.

The music box runs on solar panels, energized by projected digital images of the sun provided by www.tomorrownowforever.com, a website of live feed stills of the sunrise, wherever it is currently rising. The images of the sun that are powering the box are taken from the twenty-four hours surrounding the 2010 Winter Solstice. In this way, in the most profound darkness of winter, the sun is playing its own song.

House paint on acrylic,
12 x 36 inches

Hue Shift Between My Left and Right Eye was an optic experiment. The left and right eye see slightly different hues due to their individual make up of rods and cones. Some scientists contend this variation contributes to our ability to perceive three dimensions.

For this piece I used various paint samples, the center color being the neutral, and the right and left sides being the hue variation of that neutral, as seen by my left and right eye.

Fraunhofer lines are dark gaps within the visible solar spectrum. They are named after Joseph von Fraunhofer, inventor of the spectroscope, an instrument used to study properties of light. In 1814, Fraunhofer discovered 574 dark lines within the solar spectrum. It was later discovered that each line corresponded to a specific chemical element absorbed by the outer layers of the sun. Today there are several thousand known gaps, still called Fraunhofer lines in his honor.
Here, I have transcribed Fraunhofer’s original 574 invisible lines into a musical punch score, played on a music box powered by the sun. The sound is strangely whimsical and unpredictable.  If the sun is not shining, the music box will not play. In this way, the sun becomes an agent in its own presentation.  Its presence and absence, not only at night, but during close cover and as time passes through the day, become audibly emphasized.  

Digital video projection, looped,
dimensions variable

Digital video shot directly into the sun. The accompanying  sound is derived from scientific recordings of solar oscillations. These oscillations, not ordinarily audible to the human ear, have been sped up in order to be heard.

The resultant bell-like sounds are from actual wave frequencies as accelerated.  

In an alternate installation these sounds were transmitted into an enclosed, blacked-out room so that the light experience was perceived as personal sound.