The SAVE THE DAY project links together my on-going research, developing installations and images generated through solar and cosmic ray activity, to projects that encourage the general public to participate in the collaborative production of original art works. This exhibition of recent work features examples of a series of heliographs that use sunshine, natural chemicals and water to produce one-off time-specific and site-specific images. They are linked to the installation currently located outside the University of Brighton Checkland Building, Falmer, featuring a large-scale Sunshine Recorder that scorches patterns into collaborative cyanotype designs that were selected as part of a British Science Festival competition. Through my website, I am currently working on commissions that involve collaborations between purchasers and myself to produce artworks that each participant feels have unique personal relevance to themselves, regarding time, place and image. This process is outlined in the accompanying brochure. Here are some technical details regarding Cyanotypes and Sunshine Recorders: Following preparations in the studio, each image is produced outdoors using two natural processes – a cyanotype photograph and a unique sunshine recorder scorched arc. The original blue and white cyanotype photographs are created on paper painted with a combination of two natural salts (Potassium Ferricyanide and Ammonium Ferric Citrate), dissolved in water and left to dry in the dark. Photographic negatives or a series of opaque and translucent objects are placed on top of the coated paper, which is then exposed under sunlight and washed in water to reveal the latent ‘sun-shadow’ image. This occurs by the sunlight hardening the chemical solution where it can shine directly onto the surface, but the chemicals remain soft where they have been shielded from the sun. When the paper is washed, the soft chemicals wash out to reveal a white ‘shadow’ and the hardened chemicals remain to leave the blue. These are used as blue and white images or tinted with inks. Cyanotypes were first invented by William Herschel in 1841. They were popular in Victorian times and continue to contain a magical appearance due to the mysterious ethereal shadow effect they produce, together with the beautifully intense cyan blue. The arcs' scorch marks are made using a device based on a Campbell-Stokes Sunshine Recorder. These are erected by meteorologists in weather stations around the world to record the hours of bright sunlight each day. A sunshine recorder uses a large spherical lens to focus the sun`s rays like a magnifying glass. As the sun passes across the sky, it burns a line into the paper or card placed beneath the lens so that, if the sun was out continually all day, you would see a continuous arc running from left to right across the paper. Each time a cloud obscures the sun, the burn marks stop and then start again a little further on across the paper as the sun emerges. The gold behind each burn-mark has been gilded with 22carat gold leaf and the rest of the print`s surface has been varnished with an anti-UV coating to protect it. The gilding is intended to represent the gold of the sun, with its energy focusing on the past, present and future. Sunshine and cloud-cover never do the same thing twice, so each recording can never be repeated in exactly the same way.