Librations
2019 - ongoing
Carmelo Pampillonio and Samuel Hertz’s Librations is an ongoing interdisciplinary research project utilizing an Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) radio communications relay, which transmits signals to the Moon that are then reflected back to Earth—a moonbounce. Librations is realized in cooperation with broadcast engineers at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) in Rosman, North Carolina and the TLM-18 Project Diana Site (ISEC) in Wall Township, New Jersey with transceiving partners located at Dwingeloo Radio Telescope (Dwingeloo, NL), Astropeiler Stockert Radio Telescope (Bad Münstereifel, DE), and OK1KIR EME Team (Prague, CZ). Initial project support was established through joint residencies at Wave Farm and Pioneer Works in 2019, and continues through 2020 with a composition residency at Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm, SE) and performance premiere at the historic Fylkingen (Stockholm, SE). Materializing through compositions, broadcasts, multi-media essays, performances, and workshops, this inter-continental collaboration stands as an open field of negotiations between the Earth, the Moon, the sonic/energetic traces reflected between them, and the repurposed technological interfaces involved in the project’s execution. Through artistic practice and theoretical research, Librations engages and elevates discussions around the place of the human among planetary scalings of space and time, the physics and energetics of system interaction, and potentials for developing a poetic, affective space nestled within electromagnetic transmission vectors.
Video excerpt of 2020 Fylkingen performance can be seen here.