Heliospex — sun-watcher · Callie Schneider / Latent Space Collective

Reel

Fifty-six seconds through the body of work.

Instrument studies

Concept renders of studio design studies. None of these are built; all of them are real — tracking geometry, optics, and image scale verified in simulation and ray-trace before anything is drawn.

Viewing basin with projected sun image, sunspots visible — **The viewing basin.** A live, magnified image of the sun's disk — sunspots visible — projected onto a fixed surface, using the projection principle solar observatories have trusted for four centuries. No eye is ever in the light path.

Solar/Lunar tracker sculpture in desert courtyard — **Solar/Lunar Tracker.** Two arms on one spine: the sun arm carries the optic; the moon arm points at the moon even when it cannot be seen. Weathering steel, brass, silver.

Brass robotic-arm solar instrument at golden hour — **Equatorial instrument, golden hour.** A single slow rotation about the earth's axis tracks the sun all day — clockwork, not choreography.

Brass instrument at dusk aimed at the set sun — **Dusk posture.** The instrument holds its aim on the sun below the horizon. Pointing at what cannot be seen is the piece.

Tracker at dusk, moon arm holding the real moon — **The moon arm holds the real moon.** A visitor who passes at morning and returns at dusk finds the machine in a different posture, and understands without a label.

Brass meridian calendar walkway with projected sun disk — **Noon Ruler.** A walkable solar calendar: at solar noon the projected disk sits on the brass rule, and where it sits is the date — to within a day or two, most of the year.

Canopy casting a field of crisp projected sun disks — **Engineered dapple.** A static canopy whose lenslets each project a focused image of the sun — a field of suns with no moving parts. During an eclipse, every disk becomes a crescent.

The working simulation

Before an object exists, it runs as software. This is the live tracking simulation — real ephemeris, real time, every design posture computable for any hour of any day at any site. Drag to orbit; scrub time; watch a full day in seconds.

Open the live simulation →

Runs in the browser. Sun and moon positions computed from standard astronomical algorithms, verified against reference tables to fractions of a degree.

The notebook

Two plates from the working studies.

Noon Ruler ray-trace figure — **Noon Ruler readability.** Exact ray-trace: the noon disk's position reads the calendar at day resolution when its daily travel exceeds the disk's own diameter.

Sun and moon elevation over one day — **The sky made legible.** Computed sun and moon elevation over a single day — the motion the instruments translate.

In fabrication — Forever Grateful

Haight Street Art Center, San Francisco · opens September 2026 · technology partner, with creative producer BRAVE Design. A network of vintage telephones carrying a growing archive of community stories. Concept renders; installation in fabrication.

Transmission Pods — stained glass phone booths — **Transmission Pods.** Visitors lift a receiver to hear the archive — and leave their own story.

Listening wall with glowing tube fixtures and copper speaker hangers — **The listening wall.** Tube fixtures trace the printed microphone stands; copper hangers carry listening cones on coiled cords.