Space Station Tracker (2018)

Found inside a decaying farmhouse in the West of Ireland, we did not know what this strange device was, or who had built it.

After weeks of careful restoration, it was finally switched on. Motors began turning and the ancient digital readout showed the number “6”.

The point where the needles crossed on the map made slow sinusoidal paths from East to West, repeating in variations. When the path came close to the device’s origin, the red light flashed and something inside clicked…

The Space Station Tracker is a retrospeculative piece from an alternate reality that is very similar to ours. A reality where the Cathode Ray Tube was never invented and data is represented in a more raw format. A reality full of Folk-Tech and Information Furniture.

This piece of furniture tracks the movements of manned spacecraft across the heavens and counts the amount souls inside these craft.

[Tech: Arduino/Stepper Motors/Raspberry Pi/Python/Nixie Tubes]