Launch

‘Launch’ is a context-specific sound work, commissioned and produced by the cultural centre Tabakalera in San Sebastian (Spain) – for public presentation within the opening and inauguration of the centre in 2015, as part of the city’s year as a European cultural capital.

‘Launch’ draw on formal and interventional strategies initially developed within the author’s long-term ‘Just a little bit of history repeating’ project, to produce a new public art work for the building’s social and transitional spaces. The project being realised within Brookes’ ongoing artistic collaboration with Spanish artist and performer Rosa Casado.

The work installed a series of specifically designed movement-sensor triggered audio devices within the central public transit areas of the building, occupying a vertical core of open foyer spaces over four consecutive floors. When triggered, these individual audio devices broadcast an extract from archival audio recordings of the NASA’s Apollo mission control communications – juxtaposing fragments of original audio from the final countdown and launch of the NASA Apollo moon missions with the social movement and activities of the building’s public launch event.