Signal Tide

Kovács/O’Doherty

Kovács/O’Doherty developed a project that used satellite technology to create a poetic response to the erratic signals of LES-1, a defunct spacecraft that ceased to function in 1967 but unexpectedly started transmitting again in 2013. Titled Signal Tide, the work was a sound and extraterrestrial radio installation, which combined the satellite’s wavering signal with a special musical score, outside LACMA’s Pavilion for Japanese Art.

From the Blog: Signal Tide — Two Passes

A few years ago LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab hosted a series of special music performances featuring a call and response with a live satellite. Titled Signal Tide, the work was developed to be a poetic reply to the erratic signals of LES-1, a defunct spacecraft that ceased to function in 1967 but unexpectedly started transmitting again in 2013...

From the Blog: Whispers from Space

Over the past few weeks, 2016 Art + Technology Lab grant recipients Kata Kovács and Tom O'Doherty have been perched on LACMA’s rooftops, tracking the signal of the LES-1, an abandoned satellite launched in 1965...

Kovács/O’Doherty, tracking satellite signals, Stolzenhagen, Germany, May 2017.

Tracking satellite signals, Stolzenhagen, Germany, May 2017. © Kovács/O’Doherty

Tracking satellite signals on the roof at LACMA, August 2017. © Kovács/O’Doherty

Spectrogram image excerpt from the signal of the LES-1 satellite. © Kovács/O’Doherty

Project Website

Signal Tide — Two Passes: A Special Audio Mix

Artist Notes on Technical Development

Program from 2017 Performance1.9 MB

Other Project Documents4.67 MB

Kata Kovács and Tom O’Doherty have worked as a collaborative duo since 2011. Their work combines elements of durational and time-based art, minimalist movement, and electroacoustic music and sound. This work often applies rigorous processes to simple but frequently-overlooked phenomena — they are interested in processes, sounds, and movements that come close to imperceptibility, and the ways in which this material can be transformed through repetition, patterning, layering, and archiving. They live and work in Berlin, Germany.

Artist Website

Signal Tide

Art + Tech Lab Archive