In the process of creating Supraspectives, the artists have gathered the data of 590 (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 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, such as views on the Sahara or the Amazon forest. 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. The installation lives from the contrast between the suggestive beauty of the earth seen from above and outer space, and a critical awareness of its human colonization, very often for military and surveillance purposes. Quadrature’s artistic research focuses on data and physical experiments and during the last years, the artists have been working on the methods and stories involved in exploring our world and the cosmos around us. The production was developed in Medialab Tabakalera, with the collaboration of Astrophysics Silvia Bonoli and Raul Angulo from the DIPC, the astronomy group of Medialab and the local radio amateur community.
