Black Rain by SEMICONDUCTOR. 3′. 2009
installation version: single screen portrait/ 17 minutes loop
Data courtesy of courtesy of the Heliospheric Imager on the NASA STEREO mission
commissioned by Animasivo, Mexico

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Black Rain is a SEMICONDUCTOR film by RUTH JARMAN and JOE GERHARDT, a british artist duo who have been working with video, sound and motion since 1999. SEMICONDUCTOR explore landscapes, architectural, geographical, artificial life forms, experimenting with their own ideas of chaos and systematic theories.

We studied art, and through our interests in exploring how we experience the physical world around us, we started to dabble with scientific techniques and processes which allowed us to explore matter that was beyond our limited perceptions, revealing the world around us in a new light.

Using raw scientific data from the twin satellite, solar mission, STEREO, Black Rain twists, turns, and plots through the space between the Sun and the Earth known as the heliosphere: Working with STEREO scientists, SEMICONDUCTOR collected all the HI image data to date, revealing the journey of the satellites from their initial orientation, to their current tracing of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Solar wind, CME’s, passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by.

Their unique approach has won them many awards and prestigious fellowships such as the Gulbenkian Galapagos, Smithsonian Artists Research and the NASA Space Sciences. Their work is part of several international public collections and has been exhibited globally including Venice Bienniale, The Royal Academy, Hirshhorn Museum, BBC, ICA and the Exploratorium.

Kisses from the space!