With »Heaven’s Carousel«, a luminous Sound UFO seems to land in front of the Natural History Museum, which newly interprets the ancient music of the spheres according to twenty- first century astrophysics.

A carousel construction of 36 illuminated loudspeakers integrated into globe-shaped forms suspended to a crane by twelve strands hovers at an airy ten-meter height. In the evening, »Heaven’s Carousel« takes off: set in rotation, the loudspeakers, integrated into the illuminated spheres, hover above the visitors’ heads in a diameter of 16 meters. One is invited to move freely around under the installation to explore the continually changing universe of sound. Though »only« pure tones emanate from the single loudspeakers, they recombine in space into complex audio images. In the process, due to the Doppler effect, one tone sounds higher when the sound wave flies towards the visitor, and lower, when retracting.

The illumination of the loudspeakers completes this universal art work, which was commissioned by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the Hubble Space Telescope. The luminosity not only shows the activity of each sound sphere, the played pitches are also translated into spectral colors.

Organization / Institution

ZKM | Karlsruhe, Stadtmarketing Karlsruhe und Karlsruher Schieneninfrasturktur-Gesellschaft