Welcome
AboutThe Sun Cinema is a small cinema running wholly on natural light that has been developed at the Imperial College London Physics department. The cinema is housed in a yurt*, which is a large circular tent originating in Central Asia. Light floods through the circular aperture in the roof and projects imagery onto a flat table top in a pool of light. In the completely darkened interior, we show a series of short films spanning a range of topics, including the stories of our experiments, beautiful aspects of physics and the sensations of discovery. The films currently showing are made by Geraldine Cox, the department’s Artist in Residence and physicists from across the department. We harvest and store the sun's energy, so the cinema can run even on the darkest days and at night.
We built the cinema on the roof of our laboratories in South Kensington. It was launched at the Imperial Festival on the 4th of May, 2013. *Yurt: From a Turkic word referring to the imprint left in the ground by a moved yurt. Design philosophyWe have worked with simple design principles:
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Artist's perspectiveBy discovering the world through science we let in the light. To let in a little more, we like to explore the edges where the light is lost to the vast blackness beyond. Our ideas about what may lie in the dark hold us so fascinated and dedicated that we explore ceaselessly. It is a timeless effort that cares little for geography, favouring the journeying of the mind into the far reaches of the universe, the heart of the atom, and light itself, with curiosity the fuel. In the Sun Cinema, passing clouds and the fall of night will dim and demolish our image, just as Nature in all our experiments holds the upper hand. But we are clever and find ways to illuminate the darkness. Always the image we find is beautiful, far beyond our early imaginings and brings new dimensions of beauty to our understanding, which gilds the richness of our experience.
- Geraldine Cox, May 2013
Artist in Residence, Physics Department TeamThe Sun Cinema was built by: Jack Devlin, Devin Dunseith, Jizhong Yao, Davide Moia, Jon Dyne, Roar Søndergaard, Bèrenger Roth, Prof Frederik Krebs, Prof Jenny Nelson, Prof Peter Török, Prof Terry Rudolph and Geraldine Cox. We are from around the world: Swaziland, China, Italy, Denmark, Hungary and Britain.
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Thank You
Thank you to everyone who has supported our project with their ideas, energy and encouragement. In particular we would like to thank:
EPSRC and Imperial College London for generously funding Sun Cinema;
Ian Bell at SolaTube for donating the plastic light catching dome and light guide;
Prof Frederik Krebs, Technical University of Denmark for the organic solar cells;
Creation Display Signs for the plastic substrates to mount the cells;
Paul at Woodland Yurts;
Yvanna Greene who first suggested a yurt and
Stephen Devlin who thought of using the structure of the yurt to enable natural light to drive the cinema.
EPSRC and Imperial College London for generously funding Sun Cinema;
Ian Bell at SolaTube for donating the plastic light catching dome and light guide;
Prof Frederik Krebs, Technical University of Denmark for the organic solar cells;
Creation Display Signs for the plastic substrates to mount the cells;
Paul at Woodland Yurts;
Yvanna Greene who first suggested a yurt and
Stephen Devlin who thought of using the structure of the yurt to enable natural light to drive the cinema.