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Play, download and edit the free video Antitwilight Video Documentation.

Antitwilight, also known as the Belt of Venus is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs immediately after sunset, during what is known as civil twilight. Antitwilight occurs as the sun dips below the visible horizon, but reflects off of the atmosphere, creating a pink band visible in the in the eastern sky.

Since moving to Toronto, I've been interested in the way that the towers of the city's largely modern skyline reflect the sun, creating a kind of reverse sunset in the omnipresent glass. In researching the Belt of Venus, I became fascinated thinking about how these buildings create a quasi-artificial, enhanced version of this phenomenon. I began to think of the city as a kind of cyborg appendage of the earth itself, either augmenting or overtaking its host.

My project, also titled Antitwilight is a single channel video installation. The video image captures the reverse shot of sunset, reflected in the Toronto skyline in realtime. This iteration of the work was installed in my living room, owing to the coronavirus pandemic. It consisted of a small, rectangular screen constructed out of a cardboard box, with books removed from the bookshelves stacked in piles behind the screen, referencing the city's skyline. The video projection spilled off of the screen, also illuminating the wall and shelving behind, showing the sky. The books were illuminated by a dim, warm lightbulb - this illumination becoming more apparent as the projection transitioned from bright daylight to dusk.

The soundtrack is an audio file which I obtained from the Stanford University Sonification of Solar Harmonics project (SoSH). SoSh measures ripples on the sun's plasma surface. These seismic ripples are effectively sound waves, so the project converts visual information into sonic information based on the harmonic relationships of the observed waves. The patterns of these waves are useful to astronomers in that they lend insight into processes going on within the sun.

In this way, Antitwilight combines two forms of indirect observation of the sun, visually, in the form of an image reflected in the buildings of a city, as well as with sound, in the form of sonifications of helioseismic activity. Both cases involve views of nature mediated and augmented by technology.

Keeping with my past two installation projects I wanted to depict the city only by showing imagery of the urban environment which is in motion. In this case the motion is created by the rotation of the earth. The city's buildings become background and foreground at the same time, in the sense that they are what we are looking at, but also become mere tools for the observation of much grander natural, astronomical phenomena. As with my past two pieces seeks to explore spiritual experiences connected to nature, but a human-adulterated, compromised form of nature.

Also similar to my previous two installation works, Antitwilight seeks to create a sort of hybrid space. They all attempt to approach virtual reality, but in an incomplete way, spaces which seek to replicate nature, but also keep their own material aspects intact. The evident DIY quality of the work was important for this piece. I wanted it to be visibly homemade, speaking more to the sort of "virtual reality" evoked by the imaginative play of children, rather than a slick technological product like the Occulus Rift. This was a site-specific work, the shape of which was determined by the COVID-19 quarantine. Apart from being a solution to the problem of not being able to install in a public space, it also became a strategy for dealing with confinement. Making this work, for me, was an exercise in world building. Now confined to my home for most of all day, every day, this project allowed me to imagine. Using materials available in the house, I constructed a microcosm, a miniature version of the external world. It became an activity that allowed me to think through the reality we are all now living.

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