Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Semiconductor Films is two UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, who work with digital animation to bring to life the unseen forces of nature. During a five month fellowship at NASA's Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, California they explored the techniques, materials and philosophies scientists employ to discover and experience near space. These new works reveal worlds beyond our sensory awareness bringing to light remarkable manifestations and probing the limits of human understanding.

Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun's finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies.