Can an Aurora be captured?
Continuously changing three-dimensional lights dancing in the sky. What humans named Aurora is an abstract and ephemeral phenomenon of energy and matter. Its form, color, and movement are a direct clue to its essence and the materials it is created from.
Standing in awe one can admire natures display of true interplay of matter, energy and magnetism. „Shrine for Dancing Spirits“ is an exploration into the forces of this phenomenon and an undertaking to answer, if we can capture the true essence of an Aurora.
Credits:
Creative Direction | Visuals & Hardware by Verena Bachl
Creative Direction | Production & Code by Karsten Schuhl
Creative Direction | Visuals & Hardware by Verena Bachl
Creative Direction | Production & Code by Karsten Schuhl
A visual scale of pressure ranging up to 99.993% of vacuum seen as a white-blue shine. Simple tubes as test chambers to create the first vacuum-plasma in a small volume and with only limited voltage.
Magnetic field lines deforming the plasma in a small container (Magnetic pole orientation from top left to bottom right: N-S, S-N, N-N, S-S).
Increasing chamber volumes to mimic volumes spanned by Auroras while experimenting with shape, size and distribution of the electrodes.
When Helium is introduced to the chamber it results in a brighter white-pinkish shine in comparison to only remaining oxygen in a vacuum (seen below). But it proved difficult to maintain the ratio of vacuum-pressure to parts of helium in the atmosphere inside the test chambers.
Rather than controlling a larger volume of plasma, which proved difficult due to attenuation of low energy magnetic fields an electron gun allowed for specific ionisation of a sphere, which could be shaped by custom electromagnets.
Can the essence of an Aurora, the true phenomenon be captured?
Oversimplified: Yes…
…but only by enormous energy expenditure and constant regulation of pressure and gas composition.
…but only by enormous energy expenditure and constant regulation of pressure and gas composition.