Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag: Warden Sprites (2009) - Lecture

On Friday, 4 Sep 2009, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag (DE) will be giving a lecture about his latest work "Warden Sprites" (2009) which since a few weeks is included in the exhibition "Awake Are Only The Spirits" - On Ghosts And Their Media currently on view at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund, Germany.

The installation's title refers to the inventions of Nikola Tesla, the experiments on the northern lights conducted by Selim Lemström in the mountains of Finland in the period 1882-84, as well as current research done at NASA and ESA on 'sprites'. These are thunderbolts, so-called transient luminous events (TLE), that originate above cloud level between the tropo- and the ionosphere at an altitude of 50 to 100 kilometres, creating electromagnetic impulse fields - Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) waves - audible via radio in the form of static and crackling. In the installation Sonntag transforms atmospheric plasma data provided by the ESA labs into ultrasonic modulated air and high frequency electrical fields in the space which makes fluorescent tubes glow: Tesla Light.

Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag (DE): Warden Sprites
Lecture, Friday, 4 Sep 2009, 18:00
HMKV at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
Admission: 4€/2€

Venue
HMKV at PHOENIX Halle Dortmund
Phoenixplatz 4 (Hochofenstr. / Ecke Rombergstr.)
44263 Dortmund
Thu + Fri 16 - 20, Sat + Sun 11 - 20
How to get there --> hier

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Warden Sprites (2009)

In 2012 NASA scientists expect the next solar super storm, an “electromagnetic tsunami”, like in September 1859 when auroras could be seen all over the world and the new technology of electric telegraphy was disturbed by natural radio before our radio had been invented.

Based on inventions and ideas of Nicola Tesla, explorations of Selim Lemström in the late 1880th and the current NASA and ESA research on SPRITES (= transit luminous events between the tropo- and ionosphere) and their radial echo in natural electromagnetic Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) waves, Sonntag transforms atmospheric plasma live stream data from the ESA labs into ultrasonic modulated air and high frequency electrical fields in the space which makes fluorescent tubes glow: Tesla Light. Via high frequency AC radiation Tesla wanted to transmit energy wirelessly – like Sonntag and his N-solab for 6 years now also the MIT is working again on that technology.

Lemström built the first and only machines on a mountain in Lapland which created artificial induced aurora borealis – in 2009 Sonntag aquired the rare original 3 volumes of Lemström’s scientific studies from 1886/87.

WARDEN SPRITES raum#1: Through an acoustic – echo-breaking and also optical Schleuse You enter a black painted space. A standing pressure sinus wave is structuring the invisible Euclidian architecture with an amorph field. Over a black table with a black mirrow top a normal fluorescentic circle tube like Dan Flavin also used but wireslesly wirering are hanging on nylon strings. You are entering the high frequency field and start to form it.

The received natural ELF-waves will be pitched into the ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum and transformed into ultrasonic wave which will be projected  to a wall inside the black cube /  reception space where they reflected as hearable soundfigures – “whistlers” and “cracklers” – sferics and and red luminous flashes. Sferics are the radiosignals from northern lights, too. The inuits can hear the aurora borealis what also Alexander von Humboldt in the 18th century still mentioned.

"The sky is a great dome of hard material arched over the earth. There is a hole in it through which the spirits pass to the true heavens. (...) This is the light of the aurora. (...) The whistling crackling noise which sometimes accompanies the aurora is the voices of these spirits trying to communicate with the people of the earth." -  the anthropologist E. W. Hawkes reported about the "heavenly regions" of the Inuits in his book "The Labrador Eskimo" from 1916.

Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag

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Jan-Peter E. R. Sonntag
* 1965 in Lübeck, lives and works in Berlin.
Solo exhibitions a.o.: 2007: sonArc-project, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; 2005: 612.43WEISS l.c., Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg; 2005: sub sonus, singuhr, Galerie für Klangkunst, Pariochalkirche, Berlin; 2004: x-seascape-project # 1, GdK Galerie der Künste in Zusammenarbeit mit der transmediale 04, Berlin; EXTENSION3 - lux aeterna, sonArc-project, Elisabethkirche, Berlin.
Group exhibitions a.o.: 2009: Transmediale 09, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Nullpunkt, MARTa, Herford; 2008: Deutscher Klangkunstpreis 2008, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl; 2006: SONORIC GEOGRAPHICS, The Kitchen, New York; 2004: homo ludens, 3. Medienbiennale, Seoul.