- Title
- Solar Reserve (Tonopah, Nevada) 2014
- Date Made
- 2014
- Medium
- .1) Certificate of Authenticity
.2) Artist Archival Master USB flash drive
- Accession Number
- M.2015.126.1-.3
- Collecting Area
- Contemporary Art
- Curatorial Notes
This digital simulation displayed on a frameless LED wall re-creates a Nevada solar thermal power plant and the surrounding desert landscape. At the center of this virtual world is a tower encircled by 10,000 mirrors that adjust their positions in real time according to the location of the sun and reflect light upon the tower to generate electricity.
John Gerrard is best known for artworks featuring real-time computer simulations that explore geographically isolated locations and examine networks of energy. Working in painstaking detail with a team of programmers, he created Solar Reserve (Tonopah, Nevada) 2014 using a sophisticated video game engine that situates the sun, moon, and stars as they would appear at the actual Nevada site over the course of a year. As this virtual world rotates on the Earth’s axis through a twenty-four-hour day, the perspective of the viewer gradually shifts from ground level to satellite view every sixty minutes, so that no view is precisely the same at any point when looking at the work.
Jennie King
2018
- Copyright
- © John Gerrard
