Solar Sunflower To Create Music At Woodford Festival For The First Time

Lismore-based Southern Cross University (SCU)'s Solar Sunflower has been powering performances and stages around music festivals since 2013, but for the first time, will be adding creating music to its list of achievements too.

As The Northern Star reports, the Solar Sunflower will head to Woodford Folk Festival's Hilltop stage this weekend, creating soundscapes using its relationship between the sun and the solar panels.

The project's lead, Dr Barry Hill, says, "The amount of power we generate and the amount of power we use is going to influence the sound you hear.

"It's quite nice in the morning when the sun rises ... you actually have this evolving sound-scape as the sun hits the panels."

Hill explains, "This project was conceived as a project that would engage students with this technology and also be a vehicle for students to start working in the community.

"Basically the whole project [at Woodford] will be run by student volunteers. I'll just be there as a coordinator."

Having already graced Bluesfest and Sydney's VIVID Festival, the Sunflower, built by SCU's visual arts and audio technicians and students, aims to bridge the gap between science and art. 

As SCU's website states, the Sunflower utilises "a state of the art energy generation storage and management system that can be tilted and positioned for optimum orientation to the sun. 

"It has a 1.2 kw solar panel array and a lithium battery bank that can provide enough power to run a festival stage entirely from solar energy."

Hill will be at Woodford's Greenhouse venue tomorrow at 2.25pm speaking more about the unique Solar Sunflower.