Actual Infinity

Performance - installation - experiment - Michela Pelusio - 2019

Concept

Actual infinity is an audio-visual installation/performance that explores and experiments with the dynamics of black holes, mysterious cosmic forces, dynamos of our universe, perhaps even the origin of our universe. Modern physics says that black holes are not black, but fast spinning balls with a hologram surface. Black holes turn 3D reality into a 2D spherical hologram, pixelated at the Planck scale (a resolution of 0,000000000000000000001 times the size of a proton). At the event horizon space-time ends, creating an ever-dense picture of infinity, in one place. Actual infinity is an experiment to create hallucinatory and spiritual visual effects, using fast LED control combined with fast rotation and stroboscopic effects: a spinning sphere of quantum-randomness.

Technically, the hardware used in Actual infinity is a fast-spinning, aerodynamic, aluminum ring of 2 meters diameter, turning around one of its poles. The aluminum ring changes shape as it is being played. We use a fast microchip circuit to create a vibrant image of a black hole, live. Actual infinity uses persistence of vision effects and the mathematics of the “golden” Fibonacci spirals to cover the sphere uniformly with dots. These spirals are abundant in nature and related to Da Vinci’s golden ratio.

This is work in progress, nearing completion. The picture is a 3D-modelled dynamic prototype (simulating the rotation and the LEDs).