Ring Bell — The Solar Orchestra and the Wind Structures orchestrates a dialogue to the surrounding environment in its re-tuning of Alexander Graham Bell’s 1908 ‘Tetrahedral Ring Kite’. Bell had made important discoveries in the field of aviation and frame construction, happening upon the strongest geometric structure in the known cosmos: the octet truss.

At a diameter of around thirteen meters, the sophisticated and lightweight sculpture by Tomás Saraceno elevates with the wind in a production of carbon fiber tubing and enveloped by a sea of laminated solar foil. Connected to a sound system, the noise generated during the artwork’s flight can be recorded, played back and made audible to the visitor. A plaza, a flying instrument and suspended architecture: the wind’s silent energy is transformed into a symphony of the sky, where ideas are lighter than air, looping back to the sonic potentials that the artist shares and envisages.

For its initial presentation in 2013, the artwork was mounted atop the former Nordstern coal bunker at Emscher Kunst in Essen, Germany; a place itself that marks the boundary between standing and flying, between statics and dynamics. The artwork stands as a key moment in Saraceno’s exploration of the wind, conceived by the artist not only as atmospheric currents, but a situated conversation with a history of war. The enduring solar winds that may one day propel starships and deep-space probes upward from us are brought to a junction of sound, a Ring Bell for instrumenting our sonic constellations.