in collaboration with Juha Huuskonen and Arto Chydenius

Little Bang, an interactive Dandelion Clock, rotates with a horizontal drag of the mouse. Drag the mouse left to right across the dandelion and click at the same time. Depending on the rate of spin, the seedlings disperse tangentially to form a cloud slowly orbiting the clock head.

They form a 'solar system' around the spinning clock head. You can increase the mass of the dandelion head by dragging and clicking the mouse in a downward direction, visualized by darkening the background. As the mass increases, the gravitational pull of the head attracts the seedlings.

As the mass increases further, the seedlings form tighter and tighter orbits until they are sucked back into the dandelion’s orb. Holding down the mouse and dragging in the opposite direction reverses these forces.

This is a visualization of the theory of the Oort Cloud, by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort. He suggested the existence of a reservoir of comets in a great sphere extending to 100,000 times the Sun-Earth distance. This reservoir of dormant commentary nuclei surrounds the Solar System as much as two light-years outward in all directions.

Little Bang was commissioned by IONIC, the electronic arm of the http://www.ionic.nifca.org Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art

The computer must be Java enabled to see the project.