Created for the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, Aurora transforms the shared experience of looking upward into a permanent public artwork of light, sound and sculptural form. Developed collaboratively at architectural scale, the installation turns atmospheric phenomena into an immersive encounter with place, perception and environment.
Wilder Institute / Calgary Zoo · 2023 Permanent public art/light and sound installation |In collaboration with Joseph O’Connell + Creative Machines
Aurora is a large-scale permanent public artwork created for the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, exploring the shared experience of looking upward at the sky.
Developed collaboratively with Creative Machines, the installation translates the movement, colour and luminosity of the aurora borealis into an immersive sculptural environment. Sweeping translucent forms extend across two architectural surfaces, animated by shifting light and an accompanying soundscape.
The project grew naturally from my ongoing fascination with atmospheric phenomena and the ways we experience environmental conditions through more than scientific information alone. Here, the sky becomes a point of connection—something experienced across geography, culture and landscape.
The soundscape expands that experience through sounds associated with Canadian animals, landscapes and seasons, with a Blackfoot drum forming its heartbeat and acknowledging the traditional lands of the Blackfoot people. At approximately 24 feet long and 15 feet high at its largest section, Aurora required my visual language to move into an entirely different physical and technical scale. Working collaboratively across artistic vision, engineering, fabrication, lighting and sound transformed an atmospheric idea into a permanent public environment.
The project reinforced an important direction within my practice: the potential for art to move beyond the individual object and become an experience of place—one shaped by light, material, environment and the people moving through it.
Created for the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, Aurora transforms the shared experience of looking upward into a permanent public artwork of light, sound and sculptural form. Developed collaboratively at architectural scale, the installation turns atmospheric phenomena into an immersive encounter with place, perception and environment.