Allard van Hoorn – Skies over Snaefell

Skies over Snaefell was made by Allard van Hoorn (NL, 1968) as as a site-specific intervention in the new building for de Appel. This installation of 5 x 9 metres with 1,792 LED lights will be on display for one year.

Skies over Snaefell serves as an imaginary travelling machine and as a dynamic portrait of the Snaefell mountain. In a constantly changing sequence it shows the skies above the glacier/volcano Snaefell (hill of snow) in Iceland which are continually downloaded from the internet. The computer software linked to the sculpture is constantly looking for new images of the skies above Snaefell, made and posted on the internet by anonymous tourists, scientists, admirers and passers by. The software converts the images into a constellation of pixels of light.

Snaefell is the place where the writer Jules Verne started his journey to the centre of the earth and where NASA trained astronauts for the first trip to the moon. Snaefell is both a popular tourist destination and a magical place which plays an important role in Norwegian mythology.

The place is seen by the New Age community as one of the seven primary energy sources of Mother Earth. This last aspect serves as an indirect bridge with the history of the premises, which served in the 1980s as the “Kosmos”, an esoteric centre for spiritual development with a meditation hall, a sauna, a barefoot discotheque and a vegan restaurant.

Skies over Snaefell is made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund and the AkzoNobel Art Foundation.