2022-2023
Installation involving 2.1 channel speaker arrangement, space debris recorded live data, 4 channel video, large format prints, limited edition vinyl record
As societies follow an ever-widening apparatus of cognitive dissonance, we embrace fantastic renderings, simulated realities, and the mirage of nostalgia to escape our own existence. Regarding the outer planetary realms of rendered celestial space, we utterly neglect the crowd of 20, 0000 + debris objects orbiting around our planet. But what comes of their existence in this outer planetary orbit? Do these entropic objects still bear a resemblance to their initial form? How do these artifacts of our collective media ecology tell our story?
Our planetary midden is a by-product of human technological evolution. Dumped, and buried, it also orbits above us.
In Electrona in Crystallo Fluenti [ECF], I explore the vast orbital realm of our planetary midden, a consequence of human technological evolution manifesting as debris—discarded rocket stages, defunct satellites, remnants of past collisions—that orbits both above and around us. This celestial junk, ranging from solar panels to microscopic paint flakes, creates a unique historical tableau in Lower Earth's Orbit (LEO), offering a glimpse into our past without the need for excavation. In this work, I envision the interactions among these debris particles, contemplating the possibility that they still bear the imprint of the human touch that brought them into existence.
Through live composition and real-time interaction with orbiting debris, I employ sound as a medium to enter this orbital space, creating an ever-expanding language of probability and discourse. Using electromagnetic waves as identifiers modulated by debris properties, along with additional sequencing and tonal shifts, I collaborate with VR designer Ethan Miller's software, which visualizes NASA-provided data to track debris in real-time orbit over specific coordinates. An OSC interface triggers impulses to sonify particular debris objects in real time. The resulting visualization presents a dreamed virtual space composed of white noise, informed by basic debris properties such as distance, proximity, and variance.
Amidst the televisual static, each object's voice mirrors its circumstance, moving like a disenchanted body through obstruction and then fading into entropic submission—a poetic representation of the intricate and dynamic narrative embedded in the remnants of our technological past.
Exhibited : Electrona in Crystallo Fluenti (40.7128° N, 74.0060° W), Fridman Gallery, New York City, NY, November 2-December 17, 2022.
Unity/ virtual consultant and designer: Ethan Miller
Audio release: limited edition vinyl record, Electrona in Crystallo Fluenti (40.7128° N, 74.0060° W) produced and released by Fridman Gallery (NYC/US) from these particular live sessions that were performed at both gallery locations.
Live performance: ARoS Art Museum (Aarhus, DK), Saari Residency (FI), Fridman Gallery (New York/USA), Epsilon Spires (Vermont/USA), Coaxial (California/US).
Initial project support made possible by the Kone Foundation in 2010.