BISA 2021 conference - Forget International Studies?

Contribution ID: 617 Type: Conference event

Michael Mulvihill Art Exhibition - Noise to Signal and Worldly Noise and Electronic Atmospheres

Worldly Noise and Electronic Atmospheres is a moving image and sound presentation especially arranged for BISA 2021 by Dr. Michael Mulvihill. Dr Michael Mulvihill is an artist and academic who is innovating the use of creative practice as a tool to under- stand the way nuclear weapons and practices of nuclear deterrence have shaped our lives. He formed a band called One Key Magic with music producer Chris Tate to explore electronic atmospheres and scintillations produced by space and nuclear deterrent operations at RAF Fylingdales. One Key Magic has emerged from interdisciplinary research by Newcastle University currently taking place at RAF Fylingdales, in a United Kingdom Research and Innovation funded project called Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: making practice visible at the UK’s ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station. A major outcome of the project is the Fylingdales Archive, an online portal that will allow for the first public access to the vast amounts material related to the station’s operations collected since the Cold War.

RAF Fylingdales is a Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station (BMEWS) that sits on the edge of the North York Moors. Since becoming operational in 1963, RAF Fylingdales, along with USAF counterparts in Greenland and Alaska, has unceasingly performed its twin missions of looking for signs of nuclear attack from space and monitoring the increasing amounts of human-made objects in low Earth orbit. Some of the artefacts from the Fylingdales Archive feature in the moving images that accompanies the sound. The moving image work was produced as the result of Dr. Mulvihill’s prior positions as RAF Fylingdales’ first artist in residence. This will be the first showing of this work outside of the Solid State Phased ArrayRadar (SSPAR) building at RAF Fylingdales and is supported by Arts Council England.

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Track Classification: Conference/Management