How do we capture the sound of our universe? Waiting, stillness and listening are the key ideas from which visual artist Luca Serasini and sound designer Massimo Magrini's reflection for EGO - European Gravitational Observatory in Cascina, the international centre that hosts the Virgo gravitational wave detector.
Here, on Saturday 8 October 2022 at 18.00, on the occasion of the Italian Contemporary Art Day - AMACI, the installation Fringes of Interference - Listening to the cosmos - will be inaugurated, curated by Eleonora Raspi, Vincenzo Napolano and Valerio Boschi as part of the non-trivial dialogue carried out by the Observatory between the research of artists on the national and international scene and frontier scientific research.

Fringes of Interference develops from the suggestion provoked by the Virgo experiment's ability to 'listen' to the faint cosmic signals generated millions or billions of light-years from Earth, and simultaneously monitor signals from the natural and human environment in which it is immersed. Serasini creates a large interactive land art installation in one of the observatory's green spaces aimed at recreating, on a much larger scale than that of the experiment, the figure of the 'interference fringes', the light signal through which gravitational waves are revealed and take a 'visible' form in Virgo. Visitors will also be immersed in a soundscape specially created by Massimo Magrini, through an app that can be downloaded onto their smartphones and only works when they are close to the installation. In the work, as in the experiment, the revelation of remote cosmic echoes is confused and identified with the detection of the closest environmental 'noises': the vibrations of the earth or the hissing of the wind, the beating of wind turbines, the impact of sea waves on the Tyrrhenian coast, and man-made noises.
The installation Fringes of Interference will be open to visitors, with free access and advance booking, every Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturdays from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., from 8 until 22 October 2022. Connected to this project, an exhibition dedicated to the phases of conception and realization of the project, entitled Geometry of Time, will be held at Spazio Cascina - Arte al Centro from 24 to 30 September.

EGO, the European Gravitational Observatory, in Cascina in the province of Pisa, is home to the Virgo interferometer. EGO has been engaged for several years in projects related to the impact of gravitational wave research on society, the involvement of non-scientists in research (citizen science), organising events and exhibitions for the general public, and researching new languages at the intersection of art and science. For many years it has developed a path between art and science around the themes of Space, Time and Cosmos, with the involvement of internationally renowned artists such as Tomas Saraceno, Liliane Lijn and Raphael della Porta.