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Riccardo Torresi, Maxime Lethelier, Asako Fujimoto

Satellarium II
Sun Outage is a degradation or temporary interruption of satellite signal caused by solar radiation. In these moments satellites occur to be in between the Sun and the Earth, producing with their shadows an invisible eclipse. Satellarium II shows these astronomical events through a variation of visuals and sounds in the room in which it is exhibited. The installation consists of a set up of multi channel surround speakers and graphics projected on a disk above the viewers, representing the fragment of the visible sky from the location of the artwork. Visuals and sounds are based on real time tracking of the satellites position and magnitude (brightness of a satellite as it appears in the night sky from Earth). The gradient on the background of the projection represents the sun and it is related to its real-time position in the sky.

Quadrature

Supraspectives
In the process of creating Supraspectives, the artist duo Quadrature has gathered the data of 590 (recent & former) spy satellites, whose trajectory the installation follows. A third of them can be considered space trash, as they are obsolete or damaged, but still, they continue overflying us. The installation calculates the paths of all those satellites in real time and speculatively reconstructs the view they are capturing, offering artistically intervened images of what the satellites could be observing. Mainly satellites passing near the exhibition venue are selected, combined with other specially interesting or suggestive satellite images. Additionally, a specifically built motorized antenna on the roof connects live with the satellites overflying Tabakalera, transforming their real radio signals into sound. Everytime the installation connects with a satellite, the screen shows the data relative to it, such as country of origin or year of launch.