Cosmic Static (2018) was conceived as the first iteration of a cumulative Poem to a Dustcloud that Jen Bervin and Fayen d’Evie were researching with a shifting constellation of scientific and artistic collaborators, in connection with Bervin’s participation in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) artist-in-residence programme.

While on residency at SETI’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in Hat Creek, California, Bervin and d’Evie proposed to co-author a poem directed towards the diffuse intelligence of an interstellar dustcloud. Poem to a Dustcloud realizes this ambition through inversion: the work activates the dustcloud of moving bodies of the audience, implicated via the kinaesthetics of listening as they wander amidst simultaneous projected narratives.

Cosmic Static features a sonic installation of narrative fragments from the history of extraterrestrial listening and a sculptural element, a repurposed copper telescope feed from SETI’s ATA. Stories include the exploits of Karl Jansky, who detected mysterious star noise in 1931, and amateur radio operator Grote Reber, who built the first parabolic antenna in his Chicago backyard in 1937, to tune into radio emissions from outer space. For a decade, Reber, the founder of modern radio astronomy, maintained a lonely vigil listening for extraterrestrial signals. In 1954, he moved to Tasmania, Australia, in search of quieter skies. Cosmic Static also explores the research of SETI astrophysicist Laurance Doyle, who studies the language complexity and signal transmissions of non-human species—from plant-insect communications, to monkey whistling and baby dolphin babbling—to develop methods of discerning intelligent extraterrestrial signals amidst the galactic noise.

Cosmic Static includes contributions from sound artists Bryan Phillips and Andy Slater, who developed compositions from field recordings: from the Tasmanian landscapes where Reber constructed antenna farms, by stringing wires across sheep grazing lands; from the Grote Reber Museum at the University of Hobart’s Mt Pleasant Radio Observatory; and from SETI’s ATA, where a small operational staff maintains 42 small radio telescope dishes, searching for anomalous stellar and interstellar signals.

A binaural recording of an encounter with(in) Cosmic Static, as Sarita Galvez dances among the dustcloud of narratives, on 9 September 2018, offers an audio-descriptive documentation of the installation.

Six-channel audio installation, including two hyperdirectional speakers.

Found sculpture.

Commissioned for:

Eavesdropping
Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne 24 July - 20 Oct 2018

Also presnted at:

Eavesdropping
City Gallery, Pōneke/Wellington
17 Aug - 17 Nov 2019