Heike Baranowsky's Video Captures Light in Santa Maria degli Angeli

German artist Heike Baranowsky (born 1966 in Augsburg) created the stop-motion video "Soliloquio" during her residency in Rome, documenting sunlight movement inside the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri. The basilica houses the Clementine Meridian, a 300-year-old astronomical instrument. A hole in the south-facing wall turns the church into a camera obscura, projecting an inverted image of the sun onto the floor. Over the year, the projection changes from a large oval (winter solstice) to a small bright circle (summer solstice). Baranowsky's animation captures the sun's path on days marked by bronze stars: the motion of Sirius, the equinox, the visit of Pope Clement XI, and the solstices. She studied sculpture in Munich, Fine Arts in Hamburg and Berlin, and earned an MFA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in London in 1999. Since 2008, she has been a professor of visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg.