We know that the earth moves around the sun – but it is usually all but impossible to visualize this in our everyday lives. On the contrary: we see the sun move around us. The heliocentric view of the universe was debated from the third century BC onwards and remained contentious into modern times. Semiconductor’s Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt are interested in invisible scientific phenomena – in their work they make many of such processes apparent, such as sound waves and magnetism. In 'Heliocentric' they tackle another of their fascinations: the sun.

'Heliocentric' uses time-lapse photography and astronomical tracking to plot the sun’s trajectory across a series of landscapes: the roofs of a cityscape, a garden or forest, a greenhouse. The entire…environment feels to pan past the camera whilst the sun stays in the centre of each frame, enabling us to gauge the earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun. As the sun’s light becomes disrupted by passing weather conditions and the environment through which we encounter it, it audibly plays them as if it were a stylus.

Shooting into the sun creates many intriguing artefacts; lens flares and glare spill over the landscape, white outs burn the image, and colours bleed into one, creating aureoles. The power of the sun exceeds what both the human eye and the artificial eye of the camera can bear. And whilst our knowledge of the universe is ever growing, we can only encounter and know it from our own humble vantage point. Read more...