Progetto Costellazioni
chapter #13
FRANGE D’INTERFERENZA – IN ASCOLTO DEL COSMO
Interactive land art installation
2020-2022
Opening October 8th, Italian Day of the Contemporary – AMACI
EGO-VIRGO (European Gravitational Waves Observatory) – Cascina (PI)
Land art: Luca Serasini
Soundscape/app: Massimo Magrini
Cutted grass, webapp, 50 x 50 m approx.
Curated by Eleonora Raspi, Vincenzo Napolano and Valerio Boschi
Drone support and image post processing by Marco Paterni
Technical collaboration by Massimo Giannoni, Marco Ricci del Mastro, Andrea Mazzei and Barbara Benincasi
Virgo communication staff: Federica Gerini and Giada Rossi
Safety and maintenance supervision: Nicola Baldocchi and Carlo Fabozzi
Medium Format & view camera photographers: Francesco Malasoma and Davide Cerrettini
Owner of the field for phase #1 and #2 test campaigns: Enzo Bianchi
A special hug to memory of Stavros Katsanevas, Director of EGO-VIRGO
a project by EGO-VIRGO (European Gravitational Observatory)
under the patronage of Municipality of Cascina (PI)
in collaboration with Materia Prima Foundation, Cooltsalon, Over the Real festival, Progetto NADAR, InAbsentia and Cantiere Nuovo cultural association
How do we capture the sound of our universe?
Waiting, stillness and listening are the key ideas behind the installation Frange d’interferenza, in ascolto del Cosmo (Fringes of Interference, Listening to the Cosmos), by visual artist Luca Serasini and sound designer Massimo Magrini for the European Gravitational Observatory.
Waiting, stillness and listening are the key ideas behind the installation Frange d’interferenza, in ascolto del Cosmo (Fringes of Interference, Listening to the Cosmos), by visual artist Luca Serasini and sound designer Massimo Magrini for the European Gravitational Observatory.
For EGO-VIRGO, visual artist Luca Serasini and sound designer Massimo Magrini have come up with a interactive land art installation intervention, called Frange di Interferenza. With this work, the artists establish a dialogue with nature, understood both as the place chosen to host his work, and as gravitational waves – the object of the research itself – symbolically represented by the artist in a visual way and by Massimo Magrini on a sound level. At the time of construction of the work, Serasini immerses himself in the ground, in its blank canvas, ready to intervene; at the end of his journey, he stops to observe the finished work and listens to its movements and sound, as he himself represents himself in the drawings on display here, part of the Fringes of Interference cycle.
Waiting, stillness and listening are the key ideas from which this project starts and through which the artists establish a conceptual connection with the research and scientific context of the Cascina gravitational observatory: the observation of gravitational waves. Predicted by Einstein in the early 1900s, gravitational waves, ripples of that deep structure of physical reality, which scientists call space-time, were first observed in 2015. since then, the European Advanced Virgo interpherometer installed in Cascina, together with the two American LIGO detectors, have begun to draw a new cosmic landscape, discovering dozens of extraordinary and violent cosmic events, such as mergers of black holes or neutron stars, which occurred millions or even billions of light years from us, and whose echo, however faint and dampened, it reaches the earth.*
*Texts by Eleonora Raspi, Vincenzo Napolano and Valerio Boschi
Image by B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)
The Virgo detector is a large Michelson interferometer designed to detect the gravitational waves predicted by general relativity. It is composed with two perpendicular arms, each 3 km long, inside which two laser beams travel and are reflected by mirrors. The cooperation with other 3 similar detectors (2 in US, LIGO Hanforg and Livingstone, the third, KAGRA, in Japan) is crucial for detecting gravitational waves and pinpointing their origin.
During the first time of tour visit to EGO-VIRGO, Luca was fascinated by the scale model of the observatory that showed how interference fringes are obtained. Theseinterference of superimposed waves are used to extract information by scientists. (An example of optical interference fringes are showed in figure in addition to a scheme of how these interferences are produced). Even if the one obtained by EGO was different (the shape is a concentric ringes) the first was most interesting for him.
So the idea of a land art was born!
Image attribution: NekoJaNekoJa Vector: Johannes Kalliauer,
The construction of the installation was preceded in 2020 by two study campaigns (phase #01: Sampling and phase #02: Reflections) using an alfalfa flowering plant field near the west arm of Virgo. The work campaigns were used to define the methodologies for creating the shape of the fringes, from the design of the project to the work in the field. The image gallery displays some moments of work.
This work was invaluable and inspired some graphic works, as well as a set of medium-format photographs and with the view camera taken by photographers Francesco Malasoma and Davide Cerrettini, as well as some hand-retouched postcards sent to the supporters of the project.
Installation Opening
Final realization
This experience has inspired 2 videos and all the artworks were showed in the exhibition “La geometria del tempo“