laboratory for art and urbanism

The Rtt building in Kortrijk, with its telecommunication tower, is a well-known monument that continues to spread its faith in modern times towards the city. In the book ‘Architectur en telefonie’ it has been described as an important architectural and urban symbol of the 20th century. And just like the belfry is a sign of the raising renaissance, enlightenment, the building, besides its original function, marks until today the territory as being a symbol of modern identity, knowledge, and exchange.

The artistic project ‘listen to the universe’ proposes a contemporary interpretation of the landmark that is appropriate for the information age. A parabolic antenna, known from satellite communication, crowns the tower of the RTT building. It is oriented towards the sky and captures what, since the 1960s, has become commonly known as cosmic background noise—a sound everybody has experienced when tuning into a radio station. However, this noise is the product of the universe's activity and originates from the big bang, which is in contrast to what has been thought of as a remnant of human activity on Earth.

Since the noise might withhold useful information, numerous scientific studies have been conducted to analyse it. The project takes advantage of the technologies created to convert in real time the noise patterns into letters. The resulting string of letters already contains, due to pure combinatory logic, words, which then will start to scroll along the displays mounted on the surrounding buildings of the antenna.

The antenna, by its orientation, invites the citizen to direct their views and thoughts towards the sky, and the scrolling words invite them to let their imagination free run, as it may give a ‘deeper meaning’ to our relation to space and time.