TOURNESOL
London, UK
2021 / 2022
Ceramics, Custom Electronics, Mechanical Components
Tournesol / Tournelune is a compass that always points at the sun or the moon. With slow, almost imperceptible movement, the piece suggests a different sense of the passing of time. After sunset and through the night, the compass points through the Earth and suggests a different perspective of our place in space.
For the technically curious, the piece uses a GPS to receive the time, date, longitude, and latitude; from this, the position of the sun, the moon, and other bodies relative to the piece’s position can be calculated. The rear end of the pointer holds an inertial measurement unit (IMU), which combines an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer to capture the current position of the pointer. The machine then tries to match these positions. However you hold it and wherever on Earth you put it (magnetic declination notwithstanding), it should always find the sun.