The Solitary One

There you are, solitary in the middle of a pitch-black hole. How did you get there, and how could you get out? You’re shouting, screaming, signaling to the outside world, but everything seems to return to you like a boomerang. Nothing can escape the horizon, or does it? Is there something or someone out there who might see or hear your experience inside?

‘The Solitary One' is a performative installation transforming the most extreme and paradoxical object that our universe harbors - a black hole - into an immersive audiovisual experience. When visitors enter the exposition hall, they look to the black hole from a distance. All matter is circling through the accretion disk around the dark core. Matter within reach of the audience is perceivable as sound. Three circles with speakers project the sound into the room. When matter disappears behind the black hole, de curvature of space-time renders it visible on the LED-screen. Time and space thus fuse to a continuum in which matter circles as audiovisual elements. In a performance, the installation is activated as a real-time instrument.
Visual artist Klaas Verpoest, sound artist Vincent Caers and cellist-composer Benjamin Glorieux tend to unite art and science in their individual work. A shared fascination for the inexplicable aspects of a black hole and the concepts of space and time led to a joint venture in which they explore the artistic potential of their combined disciplines for illustrating these themes. Along the way they collaborated with theoretical physicist Stéphane Detournay. Their aim is not to provide a scientific explanation, which remains the scientist’s task, but instead to create an immersive installation offering the audience an opportunity for experiencing cosmological phenomena and the incredible forces driving them.

Vincent Caers: Composition, Electronics & performance
Klaas Verpoest: Visual & performance
Benjamin Glorieux: Cello & performance
Stéphane Detournay: Scientific Advisor

The Solitary One

There you are, solitary in the middle of a pitch-black hole. How did you get there, and how could you get out? You’re shouting, screaming, signaling to the outside world, but everything seems to return to you like a boomerang. Nothing can escape the horizon, or does it? Is there something or someone out there who might see or hear your experience inside?

‘The Solitary One' is a performative installation transforming the most extreme and paradoxical object that our universe harbors - a black hole - into an immersive audiovisual experience. When visitors enter the exposition hall, they look to the black hole from a distance. All matter is circling through the accretion disk around the dark core. Matter within reach of the audience is perceivable as sound. Three circles with speakers project the sound into the room. When matter disappears behind the black hole, de curvature of space-time renders it visible on the LED-screen. Time and space thus fuse to a continuum in which matter circles as audiovisual elements. In a performance, the installation is activated as a real-time instrument.
Visual artist Klaas Verpoest, sound artist Vincent Caers and cellist-composer Benjamin Glorieux tend to unite art and science in their individual work. A shared fascination for the inexplicable aspects of a black hole and the concepts of space and time led to a joint venture in which they explore the artistic potential of their combined disciplines for illustrating these themes. Along the way they collaborated with theoretical physicist Stéphane Detournay. Their aim is not to provide a scientific explanation, which remains the scientist’s task, but instead to create an immersive installation offering the audience an opportunity for experiencing cosmological phenomena and the incredible forces driving them.

Vincent Caers: Composition, Electronics & performance
Klaas Verpoest: Visual & performance
Benjamin Glorieux: Cello & performance
Stéphane Detournay: Scientific Advisor