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A* , 2019

ANDY GRAYDON

CLICK HERE TO VIEW A* on Vimeo

Andy Graydon
A*, 2019
video and sound installation, 29 minutes

The Event Horizon Telescope is an international astronomy project connecting observatories around the globe. The mission of this vast collective telescope array is to produce an image of the border of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, named Sagitarius A*. A process called Very Long Baseline Interferometry coordinates the simultaneous observations from the distant telescopes in the array and allows it to form one coherent image. This process of resolving an image from patterns of interference, drawing form from multiple perspectives that are distant and complex, becomes a central metaphor in Andy Graydon’s A*, a newly commissioned four-channel video installation and sound composition.

The video tells a story from multiple intertwined perspectives of a journey to the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawai’i island, where two observatories in the EHT are located. Narrated in intertitles, fragments of text trace clashes of meaning and understanding: between science in the popular imagination and its lived practices; between traditional cultural practices and those of western science; between western knowledges and imperialisms past and present.

Simultaneously, the video presents a text-based score for music performance, in which printed cue cards deliver instructions addressed directly to a quartet of improvising musicians. Based in Honolulu, Buenos Aires, Tokyo and Berlin, each musician worked in isolation to make a sound track to the video by playing it as a score. Graydon then brought the four distinct parts together in a spatialized mix that allows each voice its independence within the collective sound.

featuring music by
Ryan Choi, prepared baritone ukulele
Cecilia Lopez, synthesizers
sawako, breaths and planetary sounds
Jan St. Werner, electronics

Special thanks to Per Friberg, Jessica Dempsey, Jonathan Weintroub, Leslie Shirkey, and the staff of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and Submillimeter Array. The score text is based on the Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno, a set of text cues for creative problem-solving in the process of studio recording and engineering.