Bochum
The Bochum Observatory was the first station on the Earth's surface to receive the Sputnik signal before NASA on 04.10.1957. It was the space news station in West Germany. The tapes of NASA's lunar missions stored there are contemporary witnesses of a positive thinking about the future that was widespread in the Ruhr area in the 1960s. Bochum, the city of the future, was the slogan.
The tape recordings of the communication of the observatory with Apollo 8 (1968) and Apollo 11 (1969) available in the observatory Bochum (IUZ - Institut für Umwelt und Zukunftsforschung) serve as starting material for the space-sound installation "MEANDER TAPES - MONDBAND Session".
In the form of tape loops in elliptical orbits, acoustic sections of the moon's mission are stretched through the room. Several tape machines move the tapes through the room on deflection rollers.
Different lengths of the tape loops result in ever new variations of the sound composition.
A circular double mirror, 2 metres in diameter, floats in the centre of the tapes and rotates around its own axis. Its reflections continuously shift the viewing axes in the room. The objective reproduction of the current moment as well as the mirror's revolving around itself create an optical force field in the centre of the installation.