In August 2026, a total solar eclipse will cross continental Europe, marking the first visible there since August 11th, 1999.
Sun is a triptych consisting of a system poem, which resolves a grammatical fault in its 2011 precursor, and three short video sequences: Aperture, Augury, and Apparition. The earlier version, I’d argue, is semantically richer; this one is grammatically cleaner.
The word eclipse comes from the Greek ekleipsis, “a leaving out.” Against that omission stands phaínesthai: to come into appearance.
Permutation
apertures / align / rhythmically
auguries / thicken / vertically
apparitions / emerge / recursively
now
These ten words generate 72 system variants across two syntactic orders: adverb-first and adverb-last.
Aperture
Apparition
Augury
Weighted letters: e·i → a·c·l·r·t·u → g·h·k·n·s·v·y · A2 (110 Hz)Prolegomena
In the Greek Orthodox tradition, icons function not merely as images but as “windows to heaven,” objects of veneration rather than simple representation. Triptychs (from Greek, three-fold) became highly popular during the Byzantine Empire (which was culturally and linguistically Greek) and remain a staple of Orthodox devotion today.
Originally, many triptychs were designed to be portable. Monks, nobility, and traveling merchants used them as personal, folding altars for private prayer while on the road.
The hinged side panels could close over the central panel, protecting the sacred central image from damage and dust during travel.
The poem generates 72 variants: three nouns, three verbs, four adverbs, doubled by the choice of adverb-first or adverb-last.
This eclipse belongs to Saros 126, a cycle of exactly 72 solar eclipses running from 1179 to 2459: the orbital family to which August 12, 2026 is the forty-eighth member. Three times three times four times two is seventy-two.
One poem for every eclipse in the cycle, one linguistic variant standing in for each cosmic event across thirteen centuries. The Saros and the system-poem are the same kind of machine: both take a small set of elements and produce their outcomes by rearrangement.
Each poem-line is sounded above a fixed A2 drone (110 Hz), each letter selecting a partial of the fundamental (alphabet position mod twelve), each partial weighted by the letter’s recurrence. Noun, then verb, then adverb. The drone is the Saros, unchanging beneath each variant.
The solar eclipse triptych by Howard Russell Butler (1856-1934) is a famous trio of paintings that capture the 1918 (Baker, Oregon), 1923 (Lompoc, California), and 1925 (Middletown, Connecticut) total solar eclipses with high scientific accuracy.
These oil paintings, showcasing the corona’s detailed structure, were commissioned for the Hayden Planetarium and display the transient, scientific and artistic beauty of the phenomenon.
The core parts of Sun: A Triptych for the Solar Eclipse were initially created in response to The Wrong Eclipse, an open call curated by David Quiles Guilló.
