'Interplanetary Radio Frequencies: received from different planetary magnetospheres 1979-2014' at Partial Presence (Testing Ground for Art and Education)

Now in its 7th year, Testing Ground for Art and Education is an annual season focussed on opportunities for the creative and professional development of emerging artists and curators. A continuously evolving programme, Testing Ground collaborates with educational and artist-led organisations to develop experimental exhibitions and events that facilitate a consideration and testing out of new ideas and modes of practice. This exhibition is the culmination of a three month collaboration with students of the MFA Curating courses at Goldsmiths College and The Cass, London Metropolitan University.

Partial Presence takes at its core the idea that artworks possess varying degrees of physical and conceptual presence during their lifespan. Journeying from the initial stages of creative conception and fabrication, an artwork enters maturity and self-awareness through exhibition in dialogue with other objects, then physically degrades over time and loses currency, before reconstituting through physical restoration, documentation and historicisation. Interpreting 'presence' as the materiality, affect and meaning that constitutes a work of art, the exhibition considers how an artwork's presence is in a perpetual state of flux. Exhibiting artists include Francis Alÿs, Ed Atkins, Miroslaw Balka, Matthew Barney, Laurel Nakadate, Wolfgang Tillmans and Gillian Wearing, alongside a selection of artists invited by the curators.

Partial Presence is collectively curated by Tamar Clarke-Brown, W. Giovanni Gonzales, Jen MacLachlan, Thandi Mbire, Eilidh McCormick, Cecily Rainey, Mateusz Sapija, Anna Viani, Emma Rae Warburton and Bar Yerushalmi.
The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme of weekly curator-led exhibition tours, family workshops, talks and film screenings.

Showing works from the Zabludowicz Collection: Francis Alÿs, Ed Atkins, Mirosław Bałka, Matthew Barney, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Walead Beshty, Vanessa Billy, Tom Burr, Ruth Ewan, Mauricio Guillen, James Ireland, On Kawara, Paul Lee, Melissa McGill, Mark Melvin, Enrique Metinides, Laurel Nakadate, Araki Nobuyoshi, Rosa Ruey, Erin Shirreff, Jack Strange, Gerold Tagwerker, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gillian Wearing, Nicole Wermers and Shahar Yahalom.

Invited artists: Oskar Dawicki, Noa Giniger, Nicola Rae, Gaby Sahhar, and Andrew Sunderland.

Nicola Rae exhibited:
'Interplanetary Radio Frequencies: received from different planetary magnetospheres 1979-2014'

No sounds can be heard in space yet radio waves traverse this environment and are picked up by receivers on Earth. Names like 'chorus waves' are given to these plasma waves that relate to sounds within our auditory experience on this planet, yet these electro-magnetic phenomena are charged particles responding to the influence of the magnetic fields of different planets. This digital projection explores a parallel experience of visualized sound responding to transmitted received radio waves, which have then been refracted into revolving, circular motions of interplanetary plasmas. Three different magnetospheres and eras are focused on in this installation. The earliest transmissions were received in 1979 when Voyager traversed Jupiter's magnetosphere. In 1980 Voyager picked up magnetospheric activity on Saturn, as did Cassini from 2004. The most recent radio waves included in this installation were received from the Van Allen Probes (2012-14) within Earth's magnetosphere between 60-36,000 miles away. The earliest transmissions from Voyager include many mechanical spacecraft sounds, setting up self-reflexive sonic resonances between the spacecraft and different planetary magnetospheres.

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