Very Fast and Very Far

In 1977 the US government sent two unmanned probes — Voyager I and Voyager II — on a one-way journey into interstellar space. On board each craft, a carefully etched golden record containing sonic artefacts of life on earth, including fragments of Bach and traditional musics, sounds of animals and nature, an audio realisation of the ‘music of the sphere’s’ and children’s laughter. As the 40th anniversary of the mission loomed, the three artists, working here together for the first time, locked themselves in a dark studio, armed with three things: a gleaming desktop computer and microphone running custom software (pulled from a previous gallery installation by Tim Bruniges), a pair of keyboards from the era, plus a laboriously hunted- down fragments from the original golden record. The setup was such that Bruniges and Day could each hear McGuigan’s collaged Voyager excerpts but not each other’s responses, like a sonic exquisite corpse. Each artist brings insights from their diverse extra-musical practices, sound art, film making and writing, which lends a keenly sculptural approach to the material. The results are mysterious, evocative: like a submerged fever dream