Spectra I is a sculptural light object designed and engineered in-house at the South African Astronomical Telescope in collaboration with senior astronomers and engineers. The instrument was developed to suspend a rainbow in space by using original lenses and prisms once used in optical telescopes on the Sutherland Plateau in the Karoo desert.

I further extrapolated such experiments with my earlier installation, which similarly used astronomical prisms and lenses. Here a rainbow suspended in space changes optical characteristics depending on the angle of observation.

The sculpture functions as an illustration for Einstein's theory of relativity, where colours change and rays of light appear and disappear depending on the subjectivities of the observer's perceptions. The installation is itself an illustration of the fact the universe we share does not exist in some objective sense, but is measurably different depending on the relationship of the observer and object. The audience themselves form part of the work as the act of looking physically shifts the nature of the thing being looked at.

On another level, the work is a demonstration of the craft and artistry present in scientific instrumentation. It seeks to express complex scientific concepts by using the tools normally developed to synthesise understanding as instead being used to project scientific data in a sensory mode that can be experienced in an embodied way.
– Kamil Hassim