As part of VIENNA ART WEEK and its theme “Navigating Angst,” Barbara Husar translates the unpredictable energy of lightning into sound and transforms its mineral trail into an instrument.

Lightning is a high-energy electrical discharge, a process of equalization between clouds and Earth. In a single instant, the surrounding air reaches temperatures of up to 30,000 Kelvin, about five times the temperature of the Sun’s surface. In sand, the energy of the discharge transforms quartz into glass.

What remains is a fulgurite: a hollow, branching structure in which the path of lightning materializes, holding an extreme event in mineral form. In the Fulgurite Flute, this geological trace becomes a resonant body. Through the flow of breath, the mineral trace of a lightning strike reawakens as sound. The individual form of each fulgurite shapes how the air vibrates within it and the sound that emerges. The fulgurite is both geological record and instrument.

Barbara Husar developed the Fulgurite Flute in dialogue with astrophysicist Michel Breitfellner, tracing the passage from geophysical event to sound. Together with flute maker and musician Stefan Kronsteiner and producer André Lehner, the project continues in the album FLUX FULGUR: a series of fulgurite flutes in interplay with the elements that brought them into being.

Concept and artistic direction: Barbara Husar
Astrophysics: Michel Breitfellner
Flute making & music: Stefan Kronsteiner
Production: André Lehner

NOTE: Admission to the event requires a valid ticket. For more information about tickets to the Natural History Museum Vienna, click here.

The project is supported by illwerke vkw.