OPERATION
SWANLAKE
Web Version
OPERATION
SWANLAKE
Exhibition version
Utilising the harnessed energy of a black hole located in the constellation Cygnus Operation Swanlake began in 2028 as an attempt to develop audio frequencies capable of communicating with the universe.
Hypothesising a connection, substantiated through alchemical research, sonic components were initially developed using retrieved recordings of swans from specific historical periods and global locations and from first performances of Wagner's Lohengrin (The Swan Knight) at the Hoftheatre, Weimar in 1850 and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake in 1895 at the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg.
Renamed the Kirov Theatre in 1935, after Sergei Kirov, the murdered rival of Stalin, the name was also given to a series of Soviet missile cruisers. In 2028 the last of these ships, the Pyotr Velikhy Kirov Class Project 1144.2 Heavy Missile Cruiser, was decommissioned and purchased by IMATI as spare parts for the sonic missile Swanlake which in 2029 was constructed at Cape Canaveral, Florida. In November of the same year Swanlake transmitted a series of complex audio frequencies throughout the universe.
The IMATI Research Display Module documents geographical and temporal journeys taken during the course of the project covering sites including Alaska, Bavaria, Goslar, Leningrad/St. Petersburg, Kleve, the Catsills, Berlin, Ukraine, Titusville and WDW, Florida. Material is presented uncovering both consequential and tangential findings in areas of Russian folk dance, pharmaceuticals, Soviet naval operations, US and European parklands, wildlife observation, US retirement villages and inter-histories of space travel.
The display module also documents IMATI equipment utilised for the research, on-site drawings and watercolour recordings, analysed artifacts and culminates with testing and final construction data/reports from Cape Canaveral, including local area reports documenting effects on neighbouring Florida communities and Indian River wildlife.
