"Radio Silence" was project made in collaboration with Greywood Arts Youth Club for SpaceFest 2024 at the National Space Centre, Cork, Ireland.
The installation, developed over 6 workshops, invited visitors to step back in time to the 1970s with an immersive art installation inspired by the Voyager Golden Records. This installation transformed the historic boardroom of Elfordstown Earthstation into a space-time capsule, utilising an analogue horror radio drama as a medium to blur factual events with alternative histories and fictional memories.
"Radio Silence" juxtaposed the optimism of the Space Age with the coinciding foundation of the environmental movement, and asked us to reflect on our home here on Earth and our place in the universe through an alternative history narrative. Through the medium of generation loss—the loss of quality between subsequent copies or transcodes of data—and the use of antiquated and obsolete technology, the installation consisted of audio reactive visual displays on CRT televisions, audio transmitted via FM transmitters, and AI generated imagery viewed on 35MM film slides. The radio drama was conceived and acted by the Greywood Arts Youth Club and consists of audio from various timelines of an Earth that is terraforming itself to become inhospitable to the human species due to the ulterior motives of an non-human intelligence.
Greywood Arts Youth Club: Malakai Burnham, Adam Hayes, Elijah Howley, Chloe Kiely, Danny King, Isaac Landers, Aaron Murray, Oliver Redmond, Isaac Roche, George Sealy, Nat Szymula, Megan Walsh
The installation, developed over 6 workshops, invited visitors to step back in time to the 1970s with an immersive art installation inspired by the Voyager Golden Records. This installation transformed the historic boardroom of Elfordstown Earthstation into a space-time capsule, utilising an analogue horror radio drama as a medium to blur factual events with alternative histories and fictional memories.
"Radio Silence" juxtaposed the optimism of the Space Age with the coinciding foundation of the environmental movement, and asked us to reflect on our home here on Earth and our place in the universe through an alternative history narrative. Through the medium of generation loss—the loss of quality between subsequent copies or transcodes of data—and the use of antiquated and obsolete technology, the installation consisted of audio reactive visual displays on CRT televisions, audio transmitted via FM transmitters, and AI generated imagery viewed on 35MM film slides. The radio drama was conceived and acted by the Greywood Arts Youth Club and consists of audio from various timelines of an Earth that is terraforming itself to become inhospitable to the human species due to the ulterior motives of an non-human intelligence.
Greywood Arts Youth Club: Malakai Burnham, Adam Hayes, Elijah Howley, Chloe Kiely, Danny King, Isaac Landers, Aaron Murray, Oliver Redmond, Isaac Roche, George Sealy, Nat Szymula, Megan Walsh
Radio Silence was made by the Greywood Arts Youth Club in collaboration with artist Philip Ryan, of Nocht Studio, for SpaceFest with funding from the EirGrid Celtic Interconnector Community Benefit Fund, administered by SECAD. SpaceFest is a Science Week Festival delivered by Greywood Arts in partnership with the National Space Centre and funded by Research Ireland.
Audio of the Analogue Horror Radio Drama produced as part of Radio Silence.
Documentation photography by Chris Finnegan.