Space Weather Instrument Ensemble, 2022. multi-channel sound installation.
Instruments on the NOAA weather satellite GOES-16 monitor the Sun’s energy as it touches the spacecraft. Space Weather Instrument Ensemble [SWIE] is comprised of replicas of a suite of these energy-monitoring satellite instruments, and the suite plays the data collected by the original instruments as sound in near-real time.
The active orbiting 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.
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.