Open Rehearsal – Spring Equinox
Space Weather Instrument Ensemble
Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, NY 11106
20 March 2022, 11:00 am to dusk
You’re invited to meet Heidi Neilson’s new sound-sculpture work, Space Weather Instrument Ensemble, and celebrate the energy of the Sun on the first day of spring.
Instruments on the NOAA weather satellite GOES-16 monitor the Sun’s energy as it touches the spacecraft. Here on Earth, replicas of a suite of these energy-monitoring satellite instruments comprise Space Weather Instrument Ensemble (SWIE), a sound sculpture which plays the data collected by the original instruments in space in near-real time.
The active scientific space instruments are re-imagined as an earthbound musical instrument ensemble through a networked process. Data from GOES-16 is received by the artist-run satellite receiving station Here GOES Radiotelescope (Heidi Neilson & Harry Dove-Robinson), at Wave Farm, in Acra, NY, and relayed to SWIE through the Internet. SWIE processes the data into sound and plays it through the replicas of the same instruments which originally received it, connecting the space weather environment and the experience of the satellite to us here on Earth’s surface.
The Space Weather Instrument Ensemble will be performing at Socrates Sculpture Park on Sunday, March 20th from 11am to dusk.
This project is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.