April 2019 – Inspired by the Twin Dome
Left – The Neon sign on the roof of the old courthouse 2019. Right – H-alpha line in the desert.
In 2019 the Shine project received an invite from the Las Cruces Space Festival to make new site-specific art for the 2019 festival. The link with the Space Festival came about through shared contacts at School of physics and Astronomy at the State University of New Mexico, which is also home to several astronomers working with Anne-Marie at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.
Tim chose to collaborate with local artist Jeff Erwin and together they continued the Twin Dome, neon sign theme but this time on the roof of the old Las Cruces courthouse and jail. Right in the centre of Las Cruces, the old courthouse is a substantial building and, with an almost perfectly flat and very white roof, it offered up a surface to expand the size of the Neon spectrum almost tenfold. With the help of two astronomers from the university, Tim and Jeff completed the full spectrum – still visible on the satellite view of google earth – on the 8th of April.
During their collaboration in New Mexico, Tim and Jeff also took a busload of volunteer collaborators into New Mexico desert to film and document the key red line of the Hydrogen spectrum – the line known as H-alpha. This was turned into a short film to be premiered at the 2020 festival under the title – “We choose to go to the Moon”.