A glowing star sculpture lands in Pavilion Square on Friday

A huge glowing star called Nova will sit in Pavilion Square, next to the War Memorial at the Old Steine, this weekend. You can see it from 11am to 9pm on Friday 23, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October. It is free, with no booking required.

Nova is by Studio Vertigo, the collective run by artists Lucy McDonnell and Stephen Newby, and it is part of this year’s Dreamy Place^1,2 programme. The organisers say it will be the first artwork shown in the newly pedestrianised square.

The sculpture takes its name from a nova, when a dormant star suddenly reignites and gets much brighter. Its metal surface is pierced with more than 56,000 tiny holes, so light shines through and throws swirling patterns over the star and the ground around it. There are smoke effects too. The soundtrack is an ambient piece made from sonified audio from NASA’s open-science programme, which turns astronomical data into tones.

Studio Vertigo makes light installations for streets, waterfronts, parks and historic buildings, and has shown work in Seoul, Amsterdam, Taiwan and Sydney.

On the same days, also from 11am to 9pm, Jubilee Square has Natural Frequency, a free sound installation from Platform Asia and Dreamy Place. Four works by Asian artists on the Chinabot label play through a multi-speaker system that moves sound around the square. The cycle lasts 25 minutes, with no start time, so you can drop in for a few seconds or stay for hours.