19.2ºE
Description
Installation | Video 8 mm | 14:30 | sound | BW
Analogue television is dead. 19.2ºE is a video gravestone to the directo-to-home European analogue television. High above the Earth's equator in the Clarke Belt at 35 786km orbits a cluster of communication satellites known as Astra 19.2ºE. The Astra satellites started broadcasting direct-to-home analogue television to Europe in 1988. The switching of Astra satelites to digital started in 2001 and after 11 years it was completed; German broadcasters were last to complete this transition. This transition faced no resistance and the demise of analogue TV was hardy lamented. On 1 May 2012 at 01:30 was transmitted the last analogue TV-Signal on the ASTRA 19.2ºE. Afterthat the TV programming of all European broadcasters has been completely digital.
19.2ºE uses the warning left to the German TV audience. The message is as laconic as promissing: Digital television offers more programming in better quality. In 14min that image is aggressively dissolved and damaged thorugh analogue editing techniques. I inserted a series of texts that report when and which channel left its analogue frequency. One of the first channels to broadcast on the Astra in 1989 is the last to left, Eurosports. At the end there is just noise and a black screen.
This work mixes technical media of the same kind but that stem from different times: a VCR from 1984, an analogue videomixer and a character generator from end of the 1990s, a TV set from 1998, and a recording of a broadcast from 2012. This mix produces a technical art assemblage that spans over 28 years.