By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer  |  January 10, 2018

Spaces explores outer space with Heidi Neilson's "Ground Station" (photos)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - There are just a few more days to see "Ground Station - Cleveland," an installation by New York-based artist Heidi Neilson at Spaces. The show is up through Friday.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend a visit.

Neilson has turned the partially darkened main gallery inside Spaces into an outer space observatory that eavesdrops on satellite transmissions beaming data to Earth.

The overall thrust is to evoke a sense of wonder in a way that's more direct, unmediated and raw than you'd experience, say, in the polished presentations at the Shafran Planetarium and Mueller Observatory at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

One part of Neilson's installation is a "Sonic Planetarium," a domed structure that resembles a large igloo made of beige-colored fabric stretched over a frame.

Inside the dome are cubical foam rubber blocks on which to sit while you listen to recorded audio files that create what Spaces calls "a real-time spatial sound model of objects orbiting Earth."

The sounds were emitted by approximately 200 satellites orbiting Earth between 100 and 1,200 miles above the planet's surface.

To sit inside the dome is to enter a richly evocative aural space that exerts a kind of hypnotic power through an accumulation of buzzes, whines, whirrs, tweets, chirps and overlapping conversations whose words can't quite be made out.

The overall thrust is to communicate an idea of the near-Earth orbital environment as a crowded place pulsing with information and life - a kind of busy beach on the shore of the vast universe that surrounds Earth and our home solar system.

Also part of the installation is a satellite dish positioned so that it aims directly at the geostationary GOES-13, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric weather satellite in operation since 2010.

The GOES-13 satellite beamed images to Earth that were picked up by artist Heidi Neilson for her show on view at Spaces.
Positioned 22,236 miles away, GOES-13 beamed data that Neilson picked up between Oct. 31 and Nov. 12 by positioning her big radio telescope dish in the outdoor studio of Cleveland sculptor John Ranally, according to Spaces.

By sitting in a seat positioned underneath the big dish, viewers can peer into a circular viewing tube that frames a screen that flickers with images and graphics of Earth's atmosphere.

The installation creates the illusion that "you are looking directly at the spacecraft which is looking back down at you on Earth," as a gallery handout says.

Looking up at stars in the night sky can put the ups and downs of one's own life in perspective. If you like that sensation, Spaces offers a new twist on it, through Neilson's intriguing and inspiring "Ground Station."

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