We are excited to share The 25th Hour, a film created in low Earth orbit through David Gersten’s participation in Xu Bing’s Space Art Residency. Invited by Xu to contribute to the program hosted on SCA-1 — the first satellite launched with the sole purpose of fostering artistic creation and practice — Gersten took the opportunity to lend a new perspective to the ongoing collaborative project, 24 Hours @ Once. 

24 Hours @ Once is an evolving installation and performance conceived by filmmaker Bill Morrison, in which live video feeds from 24 global time zones are simultaneously projected onto 24 screens, accompanied by live music performed by Michael Harrison’s Raga Cycle Project. This music explores relationships between ragas (melodic archetypes) and talas (rhythmic cycles), adapted for piano and tuned in a unique form of just intonation designed by Harrison, resulting in an expansive sound world of raga; tala, and modern electroacoustic textures. Drawing these simultaneous live feeds from time zones across the world into conversation with the North Indian raga system’s attunement to the hours of the day, 24 Hours @ Once delves into questions of temporality and global interconnectivity. 

Gersten’s work with the Space Art Residency provides 24 Hours @ Once a striking new perspective. His contribution to the residency took the form of video documentation of a six-hour prototype performance of 24 Hours @ Once that took place at RPI’s CRAIVE Lab on September 14, 2024. In The 25th Hour, video documentation of the first iteration of 24 Hours @ Once is seen as it was broadcast to the SCA-1 ‘Art Satellite’ this past April, playing as it orbited Earth. Gersten’s participation in the Residency thus radically expands the scope of the meditation on questions of global interconnectivity; temporality and the growing influence of technology on artistic expression which 24 Hours @ Once undertakes. Future iterations of 24 Hours @ Once will incorporate The 25th Hour, dialogically expanding the project’s scope to include this unique outer space vantage.

Watch the video here →