Sirius C

General description

There’s no doubt that Sirius C is a piece of art you have to open yourself up to. Try and hold on to the tangible nature of the figure made of white optic fibre cables and you’ll be disappointed. In the end the sculpture’s attraction lies in its transcendence, its three-dimensionality, its non-tangibility.

The sculpture rotates and is illuminated by slides, each of which constitutes a unique piece of art in itself. While the audience is exposed to sounds that have been alienated from their natural origin, light meets the moving sculpture and gives it life. To those who do not yet seen Sirius C, the resulting effect can most likely be described as holographic. Sirius C calls on the audience to let go, dare and leap into something new that holds a unique experience for everyone. It takes you away into past and future. Someone might find themselves inside an ocean of dancing stars, someone else feels transported into a world of caveman paintings. The celestial sounds appeal, challenge and evoke a purely subjective experience. The combination of light and sound effects fuses into a symbiosis in which, for a moment, you can lose everyday life and yourself, regardless of age, gender, class, cultural background or education.

No reproduction can do justice to this piece of art, as you can’t “see” Sirius C, you have to “experience” it. It is only then that you will understand the sculpture’s name, that unites mythical, traditional and futuristic elements.

Sirius C leaves the viewer with the feeling of having experienced something special, of having participated in something special. The kinetic and audio-visual sculpture cannot be assigned to a particular style of art and connects the cinematographic tradition with the most modern projection and computer techniques.

What remains is a tingling in your whole body, and you don’t know whether you want to shake it off or make the most of it. If you just open yourself up.


Sirius demo movie



Technical description

The concept Sirius C is based on and goes back to the principle of the Camera Fotographica on which today’s cinema is also based. The audience’s gaze is limited to certain courses or directed at particular objects. This technique, supplemented by lighting and movement, gives the impression of three-dimensionality. However, instead of projecting moving pictures onto a static canvas, the sculpture rotates at alternating levels of speed that harmonize with Sirius C’s light and sound effects as it rotates around its axis, illuminated by static slides projected via moving mirrors.

Each of these slides is a unique product hand-crafted by artist Gustav Gisiger. Exposed negatives became small pieces of art as the slides’ different levels of colour were exposed by scratching and etching and partly manipulated by dyeing or painting. Up to his death in 2002, Gisiger created thousands of these pieces of art which have now been arranged in new choreographies by his former assistant Majo Ussat. In several phases of the artistic process, the slides are fixed on so-called gobos of glass, which makes them considerably more durable and stronger.

The interplay between the three-dimensional sculpture and the light effects is completed by sounds such as the dripping of water or the vibration of cymbals stroked by a bow that sound designer Michael Sievert arranges on his computer. The atmosphere of the presentation is thus significantly influenced: in part, the audience is challenged by hard, nearly dissonant sounds, and in part the world of Sirius C’s sound casts a spell like a siren over the spectators.

Gladly we show you in a presentation in our agency areas like spectacularly the effect of these performances. Please schedule a date with us.


The name Sirius C




Every 50 years the Dogon, a Westafrican tribe, have the Sigui Celebration (rice celebration), an approximately more than 5000 years old celebration of renewal, that is deeply embedded into their culture. It describes the invisible companion of the star Sirius A that is the brightest star in the constellation Carnis Major. The relicts of the traditional Sigui Celebration hold knowledge modern scientists have only gained access to in the 19th century:

It was not until 1834 that scientists discovered the star Sirius A. Ten years later there were first assumptions about the existence of a second star orbiting Sirius A that gained first proof in 1970: On a weak photo of the Sirius system the star Sirius B appeared and turned out to be a so called White dwarf.

Until today it remains a mystery where the Dogon gained their knowledge of the Sirius galaxy long time before its discovery through modern science. The following knowledge could be taken from the relicts of the Sigui Celebration:
The Dogon believe that gods gave this knowledge to their ancestors when they visited Earth. During this visit they promised to return to Earth for which the Dogon are always prepared.

The Dogon’s knowledge, first published in 1950, covers many scientific areas beyond the Sirius galaxy that are proved by modern science to a large extent. Other thesises are suspected to be true or basically unexplored. However, one of the major mysteries remains the Dogon’s source of knowledge.