Guest investigator Muzhou Lu presents SWAP data at gallery

In May 2013 PROBA2 Guest Investigator Muzhou Lu, an undergraduate Astrophysics and Studio Art student at Williams College in Massachusetts, in the United States, recently presented SWAP data as part of an art installation at the Williams College Museum of Art.

The exhibit was titled: "Unknown objects"

"I seek to understand how we react to the unknowable nature of a subject through subtly interactive displays and sculptures. I choose to invoke a scientific theme because itis often a subject of intrigue, which in this case is accompanied by an uncommon use of scale changes."

"It is often the case that we supplant the gaps in our knowledge with imaginings fabricated from experience. However, imagination is also limited by experience. So, it is fair to say that there is a knowable limit to the imagination, but the truth itself is sometimes unknowable. Sensing the unknowingness gnawing at us is just the motivation we need in order to grapple with those things that cannot be fully understood."

"This installation was developed with the help of the following programs and libraries: IDL, SSWIDL, Java,Processing, OpenCV, GLGraphics, Ess, and Audacity."

"The audio file was meshed from freely available crowd noises and two versions of “The Sound of the Big Bang” ©John G. Cramer – 2013. One version was generated from NASA’s 2001 WMAP mission data on the cosmic microwave background; the other version was generated from ESA’s 2009 Plank mission data, which is three times higher in angular frequency than the WMAP data."

"The video file was created using ESA’s PROBA2/SWAP extreme ultraviolet images of the Sun in 174 Å at approximately 1 million Kelvin."