Acoustic Space Lab

From August 4-12, 2001, twenty five media artists and activists from three different continents gathered together at Irbene, in the forests of western Latvia, at the site of a Soviet-era 32 meter dish antenna. Formerly used to spy on satellite transmissions between Europe and North America by the KGB, the antenna was abandoned and nearly destroyed when the Russians departed in 1994. The dish is currently under repair for civilan use as one of the top 5 most precise radiotelescopes in the world. The intent of this workshop was two-fold. The first was to explore the possibilities for creative interaction with a formerly military, and now a civilian-scientific, device which artists can seldom access. The second is to create a communications network of our own out of the raw material gathered at the dish. This "open-source sampling" process has its origins in the scientific and computer programming communities, where research is shared within a network for the common advancement of the field. Time´s Up created a net.loop with Jesse Gilbert (Los Angeles) which was broadcasted in short and medium wave by Radio Oesterreich International and Radio 1476.