Future Eclipse (broadcast), a two flat brass discs attached to the wall with transducer speaker produce a vibration acrros the surface to broadcast the FM signal produced by a related artwork Future Eclipse (transmission). The brass speakers pick up from the airwaves a 6-hour broadcast produced by Dane Mitchell in collaboration with seminal Japanese composer and musician Keiji Haino. The composition is devised from one list among the hundreds built by Mitchell for his ongoing project Post hoc, which is made up of unfathomably long spoken word lists which call up vanishings, extinctions and disappearances. The list broadcast here, titled Future Solar Eclipses, reads the dates and times when the Sun will be eclipsed over the next 3000 years. Keiji Haino’s percussive accompaniment is performed on a Polygonola, a ‘two dimensional’ instrument which enfolds and at times subsumes the reading of the list. Throughout the composition, his summoning of vibrations — in theory and practice — seek to both incapacitate and complicate the logic of list making, whilst ratcheting up the anxiety eclipses once caused.
This work operates within sound art, radio art, and transmission art traditions, while also engaging with astronomy, temporality studies, and experimental music. It bridges contemporary installation art with traditional broadcasting technology and draws from the fields of archival practice and list-making as artistic methodology.
The work innovates by creating a synthesis between astronomical data, radio transmission art, and experimental music. It pioneers a new way of experiencing vast temporal scales through sound and space, transforming predictive astronomical data into an experiential artwork that operates both physically and through broadcast media. The work materialises future time through the combination of list-reading and experimental sound, creating a unique form of temporal representation.
The work explores an understudied intersection between predictable astronomical phenomena (future eclipses) and human attempts to catalogue and comprehend vast temporal scales. It investigates how we might artistically represent and communicate events that extend far beyond human lifespans, addressing a gap in our ability to meaningfully engage with deep future time through artistic means.