BOREALIS
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This mesmerising installation brings the experience of the Northern Lights to cities the world over. Time slows down as eyes look up. An aurora, here and now, in our latitudes?
Throughout the ages, we have attributed countless legends to the celestial phenomenon. Today we can replicate it. As captivating as it disturbing, Dan Acher’s BOREALIS is about our ancestral communion with nature and our more recent compulsion to control it. It’s about inspiring shared emotions in the center of a city by creating something magical – something that shouldn’t naturally be there.
Connection
In all of his work, Dan uses the city as a playground to create a sense of belonging and community. His installations create spaces where strangers come together and connect. The Northern and Southern Lights have long inspired awe and astonishment ; by recreating their majesty in urban skies, Dan allows city-dwellers to share emotions beyond their differences of origin, race, religion, status, age, gender identity, sexual orientation…
Climate
Climate is rapidly changing due to excessive human activity. New patterns of natural and man-made phenomena are occurring all around us. Will we start witnessing auroras appearing in cities around the world, far from the poles they currently inhabit?
Technology and Weather
BOREALIS is as much a work of art as it is a technological performance. Variations in movement, colour, and density of the light beams, together with changing weather conditions, give infinite variations. A unique aurora is created each time.
Guillaume Desbois’ musical composition supports the installation, premiered over the Rolex Learning Centre at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to mark the opening of the new ArtLab building in November 2016.
See more of Dan’s work here: www.dan-acher.com