Radio Astronomy, streaming from deep space

Radio Astronomy

One of the peculiar aspects of streamed transmissions is the immediate delocalization of informations, thanks to the pervasive structure of the net which allows a personal and continuous ‘international telecast’, bringing any local content to screens in remote places. This is true both for video and audio transmissions, with the latter sometimes even more tied to the territory they are brodcasted from and expressions of a culture that needs to be understood and contextualized before being enjoyed. Thus, the place the sounds come from is reduced to the simple title displayed by the sound player while the data inexorably fill the buffer and the audio card processor before hitting our ears. Despite this, the farther the source of the transmission is, the more fascinating the listening opportunity will be. Radio Astronomy is based on this principle. It’s an ambitious project by Radioqualia (Honor Harger and Adam Hyde) realized through collaborations with several radiotelescopes scattered throughout the globe. The sounds coming from deep space are intercepted and decoded by the radiotelescopes themselves and channeled to a sound stream that is then made available on the net, connecting any place reached by the net to the frequencies coming from light years away. As the authors themselves say, Radio Astronomy is “a radio station that transmits sounds coming from outer space”, and one of its greatest features is the possibility to hear really distant frequencies amplifying the feeling of distance we have gotten used to since the advent of the net.