Introducing SOLARIS
Since this is the first post of the SOLARIS project, I'll try to explain the basics.
Who are we?
We are Emilio Zamudio Murillo & Berenice Rodríguez Ramírez. We have different backgrounds in art but we concur in our interest in sculpture, light, and open spaces.
What are we doing?
We want to store the light of the midnight sun inside a series of sculptures. The sculptures will use that energy to shine and display with colors information about the changes in the temperature of the arctic trough several years.
We want to take pictures of the process and learn about how temperature changes can change the life of those living in the arctic.
What are we using? Small solar panel. Fritzing. Arduino. RGB LEDs. Rechargeable batteries. A couple of handful circuits i will introduce later. Sculptures made of translucent plastic. What do we expect from our time in the residency? The opportunity to experience first hand the midnight sun and store its energy in the rechargeable batteries. A working first version of the sculptures and circuits. Information about the temperature in the area in several different years and an algorithm to translate that information to RGB colors. How are we doing so far? We had a hard but very fun travel from Mexico to Stockholm and from Stockholm to Kilpisjarvi, Leena welcomed us and told us all we need to know to survive. We have been in Kilpisjarvi since june 9. At the Biological Station we got access to the climate data from the weather station. We found out that we cannot publish the data itself due to licensing issues, but we can use it four the color display we need. The sculptures we brought with us broke during the flight and it is frustrating to have to repair them, but that won't stop us from doing it. We also are having some issues burning the arduino bootloader to the atmegas we brought since we didn't bring an external programmer and the standard solution from the official website doesn't seem to work. Ideally we want to use the light of the summer solstice to charge the batteries but the climate is great right now and we have been told that it might not be as good later so maybe we are going to charge some of them this week.
