clox-Looking Outwards-03 

 

Positions of the Unknown is an interactive installation by Quadrature, a Berlin-based artist duo focusing their artistic research on data and physical experiments. The installation is composed of 52 small machines constantly moving to follow the path of 52 corresponding satellites orbiting Earth, whose movement has been tracked, but whose purpose or identity is still unknown (or redacted). The data for these satellites' movement has been catalogued by amateurs coming out of the "Operation Moonwatch" years, during which the government had to train civilians to detect artificial satellites due to the lack of infrastructure to surveille outer space.

While the interaction between the machines and the movement of the unknown satellites is poetic, I think the installation could have given more context to the moving machines (besides a wall text). Basically, I wish the installation referenced or represented more the human work that was done to track the movement of these satellites.