Hazel Dell

The physical aspects of “Arcus Stellarum” came first, as we knew that we wanted to use the physical structure from Eclipse (shown at Solstice  2022 - 2024) for a new artwork. Given this starting point, we wanted to create an installation that would play on a loop, but wouldn't have a clear and distinct "start" and "end". The early, broad strokes creative ideas were to create a sort of cosmic meditation, something never-ending and non-narrative.

While starting to develop some creative and conceptual ideas for this piece, I came across a quote from Carl Sagan: "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." I also came across Neil Shubin's book The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People, where he makes connections between the cosmos and the evolution of life and humanity, and the elemental make up of the human body. Being at Mount Auburn has always evoked questions and thoughts that I would place at a "cosmic" scale: thoughts about life, death, and loved ones who've passed away, thoughts about our place in the universe and the relatively miniscule timescale that is our lives compared to the timescales of many events and entities across the universe. 

“Arcus Stellarum” roughly traces a life cycle of a star through seven different periods from a cloud of stardust through the birth of the star, into maturity and old age, before culminating in a supernova and black hole, before beginning anew. For the sound composition, we (Jeremy and Odie) knew we wanted to have some literal connections so we developed a process where Odie would send me audio that he was developing for different sections, and I would put it into software to analyze it in a number of different ways, producing data about the audio, that I then used in the development of the video to control and change different parameters. Through this process, we can create moments where the video and audio are tightly synchronized, or when changing harmony alters the behaviors of different visual elements.