Lightcurve

Joshua Borsman · 2026

Engine / · CV

Lightcurve

A telescope tuned to A♭ minor.

Thirteen deep-field photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope cycle, one at a time, beneath a scanning gantry. Every twelve seconds the gantry stops on a new point and reads the patch of light beneath it. The patch — its hue, brightness, variance, the entropy of its small histogram — becomes a three-note phrase. The piece is meant to play for hours. It never repeats.

Lightcurve was conceived for the gallery: a long unhurried cadence, a wide stereo field, and a slow image cycle that rewards extended attention. It is also intended to function in the browser, on headphones, as a stable accompaniment to other work.

Image

Each frame is held for ninety to one hundred twenty seconds before cross-fading to the next. Within a frame the image is cover-fit to the room and re-cropped at random on each load — the same target framed afresh each time, as a telescope re-points. A thin cross-hair walks the frame, pausing on each new sample. A circular zoom panel renders the patch under the cross-hair; a smaller circular panel shows the live RGB histogram of that patch, with a thin spectrum-line readout beneath. Together the three indicators are the instrument: the visitor sees, at every moment, exactly the sliver of light the piece is reading.

The framing accumulates a quiet biography. As the gantry pauses, a small fading marker is dropped at each sample point — a record of where the listening has been within the current frame. The markers dissolve as the frame cross-fades to the next; on each new arrival the field begins again, empty.

Sound

The piece sits in A♭ minor pentatonic — five notes per octave, sparse enough that any two strikes coexist consonantly, dark enough that the gantry's slow sampling reads as contemplative rather than cheerful. Hue picks the scale degree; vertical position picks the octave; saturation chooses the interval to the second note; entropy decides whether the phrase resolves on the fifth or the octave; brightness sets the strike velocity. A bright tile strikes harder and tighter; a dark tile strikes softer and lingers between notes. Two tiles never quite produce the same phrase.

Three voices carry the piece. A modal resonator rings under each strike — a stack of detuned partials at near-bell ratios, attack short, decay long, upper partials darker than the bottom. A granular processor works a slow drone bed beneath, retuned softly by the dominant hue of the current frame. A multi-tap stereo delay opens the room around both. Nothing in the piece is pre-recorded or sampled. What is heard at any moment is a function of what the gantry is reading, right now.

Modular mode

In its installation form, the image-analysis stream drives an eight-channel control-voltage feed to a modular synthesiser instead of the browser engine — different voices, the same logic.

Specification

Title: Lightcurve
Year: 2026
Medium: Real-time generative sound installation; web audio or modular synthesis
Duration: Continuous, non-repeating
Source: Public archive of the James Webb Space Telescope · NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Frames: Thirteen, in fixed order; cross-fade at ninety to one hundred twenty seconds
Tuning: A♭ minor pentatonic; root A♭3 at 207.65 Hz

Frames

01 NGC 3132 · Southern Ring Nebula
02 Eagle Nebula · Pillars of Creation
03 WR 124 · Wolf-Rayet Star
04 M57 · Ring Nebula
05 M1 · Crab Nebula
06 Cassiopeia A · Supernova Remnant
07 HH 211 · Protostellar Outflow
08 NGC 6072 · Planetary Nebula
09 NGC 604 · Star-Forming Region
10 NGC 3324 · Cosmic Cliffs (Carina)
11 NGC 2070 · Tarantula Nebula
12 Rho Ophiuchi · Cloud Complex
13 L1527 · Protostar

Artist

Joshua Borsman makes sculpture, sound, and kinetic work — staged in galleries, gardens, sidewalks, and orbit. The pieces convert real, public signals — orbital trajectories, ocean tides, the imagery of the James Webb Space Telescope — into work that unfolds in time and refuses to repeat. Documentation and other work at joshuaborsman.com.

Notes for listening

Use headphones if you can. On iPhone, the side mute switch silences the piece — flip it off (no orange showing). There is no end state. The piece runs as long as the tab is open.

Colophon

Image: HTML Canvas
Audio: Web Audio API
Source frames: James Webb Space Telescope · NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Modular interface: Eight-channel CV from the browser
Typography: EB Garamond · Inter · JetBrains Mono

Lightcurve

A telescope tuned to A♭ minor.

A real-time sonification of deep-field imagery from the James Webb Space Telescope. Best with headphones, or speakers capable of low frequencies.

Press F for fullscreen.