Solar Reflections: On the Sun Mirror in Rjukan

The Sun Mirror (2013) by Martin Andersen is a mirror machine placed upon a mountain top. It reflects sunlight down to the town square in Rjukan, a small Norwegian town that is located in the shade for almost six months each year. Based on a century-old idea, the mirror realised the dream of Rjukan’s inhabitants to see the sun in wintertime. What makes the idea of a man-made sun mirror still relevant in the 21st Century, 100 years after its first mention in the heyday of the Second Industrial Revolution? This chapter contextualises the Sun Mirror by discussing ecological aesthetics and argues that despite its technological structure, the mirror opposes treating nature as a recourse for human exploitation. Rather it makes visible the properties of the sun (the sun’s temporality and rhythm) and promotes the sun in itself as life-giving and vital for us humans.

Stabilization of magnetic mirror machine using rotating magnetic field

An increase in symmetry is observed for a low density non-collisional plasma, in a simple magnetic mirror machine, due to the application of external oscillating magnetic fields of 1.5 MHz frequency. The increase in symmetry is attributed to an increase in stability of the flute mode and is dependent on the field’s polarization and trap magnetic field strength.

Cinema, the (Digital) Machine of the Imaginary: Revisiting Edgar Morin in the Quest to Create a Theory of Cinema in the Digital Age1

Digital image technology facilitates the production and distribution of images, and at the same time, instills doubt as to the integrity of those images. As a result, spectators today trust and doubt the image while still retaining a need to see a double of the world on screen. Edgar Morin’s work on cinema permits us to speak of cinema in the digital age because he recognizes that from its origins cinema has been a “mirror-machine” that reflects the spectator’s imaginary and practical relationship with images as experienced through new technologies. I will explore Morin and Christian Metz’s writings on cinema to analyze cinema’s foundational element : the ability to satisfy the besoin de cinéma throughout changes in technology. Cinema persists as digital moving images because by evolving technologically it responds to the spectator’s need to see a double of the world on screen in order to negotiate the demands of society and personal desires.