Here at Inhabitat we love the wind — it’s one of our favorite natural resources. That explains our excitement when we heard about Luke Jerram’s new artistic venture, an acoustic pavilion that sings when the breeze blows by it. The project is named Aeolus after the Greek God of the wind, and it will employ hundreds of light tubes outfitted like Aeolian harps. Each pipe, or harp, has strings in it and as the wind passes over the structure in different directions the wind will strike chords in various parts of the circular structure. The art piece will travel all over the UK to windy summits and play a concerto of nature in each location.
Aeolian Harps have been around for centuries. Traditionally made of wooden boxes with two strings, they have evolved over time. Jerram will make his harps out of long metal tubes which will also act as light pipes, filtering light through them to the seating area in the center of the art piece.
Though Aeolian Harps have been playing the wind’s tune for years now, they are usually only exhibited in small groups, sometimes even in the small scale of a window open to the wind. Jerram has taken the aeolian harp and expanded it’s function to include sunlight. Jerram’s Aeolus will turn the earth’s shifting winds and changing light into a performance for the eyes and ears.
Jerram has a history of environmentally focused projects — his Plant Orchestra is currently in continuous production. The Aeolis project is being funded by the United Kingdom’s Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and is being hosted by the acoustic engineering departments at the University of Southampton (ISVR) and University of Salford, where Jerram will be a research fellow on the project. It is currently in the engineering stages and once built is slated to make visits to different locations in the UK before being installed as a permanent art sculpture.
+ Luke Jerram’s
Via Green Diary
