Following the Heart of Darkness

Real- time computer piece, 2007

Various installations: Projection, Computer, atomospheric software, etc.

"Following the Heart of Darkness" tracks, in real-time, the antithetical pole of the night (the so called "night-spot"). This is the spot on the earth's surface which faces furthest from the Sun at any given moment in its motions both in the daily and yearly motions of the globe. The tracking of the "night-spot" of the earth is carried out through specifically created (by the artists) computer software which analyses and tracks the "night-spot" and replicates the actual darkness, or "blackness" of the night sky at this (continually changing) point on the earth. This is the so-called "heart of darkness of the world. Three major categories are analysed to give a night "darkness value" of this point, generated in real-time, for the earth. A) global coordinates (latitude and longitude of the "night-spot" - which will constantly shift through the daily rotations of the earth as well as the slower yearly motions of yearly changes from the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn), B) the additional illumination this spot will get from the rising and setting of the Moon and its phases, and C) the particulates which cause a greyness and shifting to the blackness and surface of the night sky. As this is continually changing due to rotation of the earth, the revolution of the moon, and location of the earths position in relation to the sun (yearly earth rotation), as well as atmospheric conditions at the coordinates of the dark-spot, the values and representation of the "darkness" is continually in flux.