A COSMIC EQUATION
2020 - 2025
δ=23.45°⋅sin[360°/365⋅(284+N)]
The conceptual framework for this project came from a simple phenomenological realization: it was June 21, 2014, and I was a valet in a hot Phoenix parking lot, seeing my smallest shadow of the year.
The length of one’s shadow varies throughout the year due to the oscillating degree of the Sun's declination, or peak apparent height, throughout the seasons, calculated by the equation
δ=23.45°⋅sin[360°/365⋅(284+N)].
A sine wave is the projection of a point moving at a constant speed on a circle, graphed onto a horizontal line over time. In this case, the circle is Earth’s position around the Sun, and the projection is drawn by the angle of the sunrays blocked by my presence. I use my body as a fixed measure on the circle of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, turning my existence into an intimate solar declinometer, allowing the Earth’s movement to draw itself. Over time, a sine wave emerges as my shadow grows and contracts as the seasons direct a planetary cycle of regeneration. Featured here are the past five years of that cycle.
The oscillation is caused by Earth’s axis being tilted rather than perpendicular to the plane of our planet’s revolution around the Sun. In the summer, when this tilt leans the northern hemisphere toward the Sun, sunrays reach Earth from the most northern angle of the year, creating shorter shadows for objects north of the equator. In the winter, when the planet’s tilt leans the northern hemisphere away from the Sun, the direction of sunrays approaches from below the equatorial plane, as the Sun reaches its lowest point in the sky for observers north of the equator, drawing longer shadows.
For this project, I have been making photographs four times a year at high noon, when the Sun is at the zenith (the highest point for that day), to record my shadow's length on each solstice and each equinox, indexing my longest shadow, my shortest shadow, and the two midpoints as the ecliptic crosses the equatorial plane and shadows transition between each extreme. This process marks each 90º interval of our circular travel around the Sun.
The project has become a collaboration with the Sun that uses my body to notice a larger celestial geometry, turning a universal astronomical cycle into something human-scaled and observable. My shadow becomes a living graph of our planet's 584 million-mile dance with our local star. A visual record of the Earth’s orbit, embodied in my being.
This ritual does not just measure my changing position within the solar system, however, it also provides existential affirmation that, while relatively diminutive, my being is real and is a measurable integral in a larger system.
I am included in the cosmic equation.