Listening to the Rover Alone

The Rover is alone.

Alan Cook with the Rover at the Roseworthy Campus

It wakes each day in a vast, unfamiliar terrain, carrying the accumulated objectives of its makers.

These works form a collection of imagined scenes shaped by those objectives. The pieces don’t document a specific location so much as propose an experience and ask the question ‘What might it be like to work alone on another planet?’. By personifying the rover, the music invites reflection on the familiar human condition of working alone, at a distance, toward outcomes for the benefit of others.

There is no ceremony to Romulus’ movement, only process, recalibration and adjustment. Motors engage, systems are checked, data is gathered. The Rover goes about its business quietly and carefully.

When technologies are sent into the unknown, they carry traces of their makers. In this work, that evidence is heard as sound. The rover does not wander. Each movement has a function. Its purpose is embedded in code and circuitry, and in the mechanical sounds produced by action.

Across the collection, the rover advances with steady momentum. There are moments of tension and moments of optimism, followed by long stretches of repetition and work. Another day. Another task completed. Progress is incremental. Outcomes are not guaranteed.

The music is constructed from field recordings captured using a Zoom Hn1 microphone, combined with electronic sound created for and by the Korg Wavestate.