«Heliófonos» 2024

Diego Liedo

Heliophones are a series of autonomous instruments which translate the sun into sound sculptures. Their name comes from the Greek hḗlios: Sun, and phōnos: sound.

This work is the artist’s approach to his interest of how to “translate” physical phenomena to sound.  

There are three families of instruments so far: percussion, wind and electronic; each family has a different approach to the translation.

“Heliófonos – Diapasones”

2024-2025.

The percussion instruments could be considered the literal translation of how sunlight reaches our planet. 

For every week over the solar year, starting in march 19 2024 a custom made steel diapason or tuning fork was subject to an electrolysis process in an elctropolishing bath, this process slowly made the tuning forks thinner, thus lowering their frequency. All the tuning forks started in G4, 392Hz. and were left for a whole week on the electrolysis tank, the electricity for the process is provided by a solar panel dedicated to this sole purpose.

After the tuning forks have been sun tuned, each 4 (corresponding to a solar month) are mounted in a wood table and a mechanism hits them simultaneously.

The sound of each sculpture is an arbitrary microtonal mix of the solar energy production during a month.