Solar Ears

This project is now archived and was part of DDW23

This project is part of
Design United.EXPO by 4TU

Boy listening to solar energy using a "solar ear".

Image by Angella Mackey

Solar Ears are part of an ongoing research project called 'Designing with the Sun' that explores new ways of relating to solar energy.

What does it mean to hear solar energy?

This research starts with recognising that unlike fossil fuels, we can directly perceive solar energy in our environment. So then, what does this mean? While fossil fuels can be understood in abstract or technical ways—coming to us from somewhere, somehow—we don't truly relate to energy as something with texture and movement, with a voice and a presence in our space. For this exhibition we present artefacts from our research called "Solar Ears", which have helped us begin to peel back the layers of our own energy blindness. By sonifying the solar energy in our space, we have heard it appear and disappear, move and change, over short and long periods of time. With a more-than-human mindset, we have come to know solar energy differently by being with it in a variety of ways, helping us unlearn what we thought solar was and explore what new lenses on energy might mean for solar design and the energy transition.