The installation is composed essentially of two softwares interacting between: gpredict and puredata. Gpredict track the satellites and send data as elevation, azimuth and position to a puredata patch through Open Sound Control protocol.

You can download all the code from github’s page:

https://github.com/husk00/sonandoSatelites-fictional-serie

Gpredict

This software is real-time satellite tracking and orbit  developped by Alexander Csete and released under the G.P.L. 2.0 license. It is an amazing program that let you track satellite based on public TLE data.. The fake satellites used, as well the real ones, are inserted in the system by using the config directory called Gpredict in the git repository. Actually the directory Gpredict/satdata contains a lot of unutilized satellites information that I leave there for laziness.

A preset with Quito as ground station information plus a selection of used satellites is bundled with the package.

In order to make it communicates with puredata  I had to hack the original code of the program.

[NOTE]

That, let me say, it was a wonderful demonstration, as artist that work with software, of the beauty and power of free software. Only free software let you adapt a previous software to some real artistic and technical condition the artist is facing, letting you to adapt it to fit your needs (and not the opposite, as usual happen).

[/NOTE]

The hack basically consist in modifying the file gtk-polar-view.c in the Gpredict-osc/src directory adding the code for sendings a boolean variables according to the position of the satellite related to the ground station. So when the satellite pass over the ground station a true var is sent and a audio file is played.

This hack follow the original hack of 2011 from David Pello and Bruno Vianna, whom added for first time OSC capabilities to Gpredict.

Puredata

The audio engine is composed by a collection of puredata patch receiving OpenSoundControl messages. Puredata is a dataflow programming language originally designed for DSP programming. It is released under the BSD license Term from Miller Puckete and have a great and strong community behind that make this software so punk and so beautiful. For this installation puredata vanilla was used in combination of some external, as listed in the README file. All this externals are packaged in the multimedia debian repository

Audio engine is divided in different directories one for each satellites. Some patch play just a recorded file in WAV format. Others use generative real time sounds: the puredata patch tool used to create this patches was the #webpd framework developed by Sebastien Piquemal. Especially I used the random generator demostration as in http://sebpiq.github.io/pd-fileutils/demos/randomDrone.html.

(Many many Thanks for this wonderful framework!)

Audio

The scripts present in the directory are supposed to make it easy run the installation and to automatize some task (like check if it is working or not and reboot the installation) All the audio files used by the installation are downloadables from http://estereotips.net/release/sounds/ and must be copied inside audioEngine/sounds/ directory.

They are released under the Creative Commons Zero license.

Satellites are all around us. Floating in the space there are more than 13000 pieces of metal streaming all kind of data. Our concept of space and time changed since we can base our day life on tools like google maps, gps and others satellite stuffs. There is a continuous stream of information in and out from our planet that define a new way to live the globe.

Soñando Satelites [Dreaming Satellites in Spanish] is a ritual of re-appropriation, a celebrations of the fact we are involved in the same data-space. It is an artistic sound visualization of ficcional satellites that exist as narrative objects. Floating in a noplace between the materiality of the communities involved in these projects and the immateriality of dreams, soñando satelites wants to explore that possibility that exist in the use of outer space as space of commons.

Space is the last place still not privatized where all our data and dreams persist over time. Dreams like the one of Palestine Space Agency that create AMMAN01 with the desire to redefine the concept of space; like Oficina de asuntos extraterrestres who launch a deep space sonar in the form of ancestral rituals of colombia indigenous peoples; or like Bolivia government who seeks for autonomy with Tupak Katari I satellite. These projects, ideas, dreams, are psycosatellites in the Soñando Satelites map, because they work on the consciousness proposing to look over our head as a land to explore and hack.

This work is the second step of an original project from 2011, called just Soñando Satelites. With this new version I want to work with fictional data, fake satellites from real community/art projects that exists over the planet. This installation mix together real and fictional satellites creating a hyper real narrative where a story is told through data and sound.

The form that this installation takes is a simple projection of the planisphere of earth: when a satellites is passing over our ground station (Quito in that first version) a sound is played from the same satellites visualization.

The sound of each satellite is created by taking some data like elevation, azimuth and position and using it to drive generative synthesizers.
In the case of fake satellites instead I mostly used recording from interviews like for the Ulises I, old movies, like for Afro futurism African Satellite, personal field recording like for the Amman01 and oficina de asuntos extraterrestres. You can find the recorded sound here. All the code is described and published here.

Some example of the sounds:

AMMAN01

Oficina de Asuntos Extraterrestres

PEGASUS 01

This installation was especially developed for “Arte in Orbita” exposition, from curators Pedro Soler and Fabi Borges, exposed in march 2015, in the CIty of Quito, Ecuador.

The February 21th, 2015, at the Third Open Data Day organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation, was held  the Open Knowledge Workshop – Open Arts at the department of mathematics and computer science of the University of Catania (Italy). On this occasion, rather than stick to the topic of open data by public authorities, the organizers decided to tackle the broader issue: the paradigms of Open Knowledge. All this with a particular focus on the production, promotion and enjoyment aware of the artistic and cultural heritage.

The first intervention was in fact held by a digital artists: Stefano Roveda.

Stefano Roveda told us about some of the interactive installations and distributed systems he worked with Studio Azzurro, an historical yet really important italian collective of artists to which he belongs. Was very interesting see how he, and his group, needed a lot of creativity in order to solve technological issues that today are much much easier. By doing that Stefano demonstrated us not just great invention spirit but to have put the basis of what interactive and digital art have been in Italy and how still  matter what they did.

After Stefano Roveda I was invited to speak.

I presented Soñando Satélites as a case study in order to make a collective analysis around the topic open data – open knowledge. Projects like the Palestinian Space Agency, in fact, demonstrate how satellites are narrative art platforms that help to rethink old paradigms about geographical space. If its true we can use a lot of data from space devices because they are open by design, like TLE, what is exactly the object of our actions then? Do we have a goal?

It is interesting how the jurisdiction over outer space and important declarations like the Bogotá’s declaration of 1978 open up questions about governance of this common knowledge we have as humans. The outer space and satellites cases, are not just about the space but represent a different way to thinks about the commons (resource) in general.

And I believe that is very interesting addressing this topics from the arts

Soñando Satelites have been selected for the Linux Audio Conference 2012 in San Francisco.

Badly they don’t have enough money to pay my ticket and I don’t have time/idea how to make some founding in one month. So it will be next time, but it’s really a pity!