Hand over Panel

sunlight, photovoltaic panel, amplification

Hand over Panel was made for Avantwhatever Commissions, a series of video works hosted on AW’s dedicated audiovisual server and website, using the open web and peer-to-peer technologies, and running on 100% renewable energy. Extra special thanks go to Ben Byrne and Avantwhatever for the opportunity to make and present this work. You can view it here.

Hand over Panel is a performance work that explores the possibility of using photovoltaic technologies for a physical, embodied interaction with sunlight, realised through sound. Despite its simplicity, performing with sunlight makes it difficult to present this work to a live audience, so video seems to make sense.

Peter Blamey, Hand over Panel (2023), video, 11:11.

Technically speaking, the work is fairly straightforward: the output from a small photovoltaic (solar) panel is connected directly to an audio amplifier. In full sun, the electrical current the panel produces is heard as quiet hiss. However, when portions of its surface are shadowed by my hand, the amount of sunlight falling on the panel is reduced, along with its electrical output, causing the sound to increase in volume, shifting and deepening in tone. Ironically, in this case, less energy equals more sound.

My hand also interrupts the steady flow of photons onto the panel, no doubt contributing its own changes in texture and reaction, which is further complicated by me moving my hand around in response to the sounds I’m hearing, searching out new interactions. Sunlight, hand, panel and shadow combine to produce swelling, energetic, oceanic noise, here doubled through the separate performances seen on the left and right of the screen.