FRANGE D’INTERFERENZA – IN ASCOLTO DEL COSMO
Interactive land art installation
2020-2022
Opening October 8th, Italian Day of the Contemporary – AMACI
EGO-VIRGO (European Gravitational Waves Observatory) – Cascina (PI)

Land art: Luca Serasini
Soundscape/app: Massimo Magrini 

Cutted grass, webapp, 50 x 50 m approx.

Curated by Eleonora Raspi, Vincenzo Napolano and Valerio Boschi

Drone support and image post processing by Marco Paterni
Technical collaboration by Massimo Giannoni, Marco Ricci del Mastro, Andrea Mazzei and Barbara Benincasi
Virgo communication staff: Federica Gerini and Giada Rossi
Safety and maintenance supervision: Nicola Baldocchi and Carlo Fabozzi
Medium Format & view camera photographers: Francesco Malasoma and Davide Cerrettini
Owner of the field for phase #1 and #2 test campaigns: Enzo Bianchi

A special hug to memory of Stavros Katsanevas, Director of EGO-VIRGO

a project by EGO-VIRGO (European Gravitational Observatory)
under the patronage of Municipality of Cascina (PI)
in collaboration with Materia Prima Foundation, Cooltsalon, Over the Real festival, Progetto NADAR, InAbsentia and Cantiere Nuovo cultural association

For EGO-VIRGO, visual artist Luca Serasini and sound designer Massimo Magrini have come up with a interactive land art installation intervention, called Frange di Interferenza. With this work, the artists establish a dialogue with nature, understood both as the place chosen to host his work, and as gravitational waves – the object of the research itself – symbolically represented by the artist in a visual way and by Massimo Magrini on a sound level. At the time of construction of the work, Serasini immerses himself in the ground, in its blank canvas, ready to intervene; at the end of his journey, he stops to observe the finished work and listens to its movements and sound, as he himself represents himself in the drawings on display here, part of the Fringes of Interference cycle.

Waiting, stillness and listening are the key ideas from which this project starts and through which the artists establish a conceptual connection with the research and scientific context of the Cascina gravitational observatory: the observation of gravitational waves. Predicted by Einstein in the early 1900s, gravitational waves, ripples of that deep structure of physical reality, which scientists call space-time, were first observed in 2015. since then, the European Advanced Virgo interpherometer installed in Cascina, together with the two American LIGO detectors, have begun to draw a new cosmic landscape, discovering dozens of extraordinary and violent cosmic events, such as mergers of black holes or neutron stars, which occurred millions or even billions of light years from us, and whose echo,  however faint and dampened, it reaches the earth.*

*Texts by Eleonora Raspi, Vincenzo Napolano and Valerio Boschi
Image by B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration)

The construction of the installation was preceded in 2020 by two study campaigns (phase #01: Sampling and phase #02: Reflections) using an alfalfa flowering plant field near the west arm of Virgo. The work campaigns were used to define the methodologies for creating the shape of the fringes, from the design of the project to the work in the field. The image gallery displays some moments of work.

This work was invaluable and inspired some graphic works, as well as a set of medium-format photographs and with the view camera taken by photographers Francesco Malasoma and Davide Cerrettini, as well as some hand-retouched postcards sent to the supporters of the project.

Installation Opening

Final realization

This experience has inspired 2 videos and all the artworks were showed in the exhibition “La geometria del tempo“

Exhibition “La geometria del tempo”