Eternal Love

In “The Eternal Love,” Luca Pozzi engineers a sophisticated haptic-acoustic environment that functions as a literal and metaphorical bridge between astrophysical phenomena and terrestrial life. The installation reconfigures a standard table tennis surface into a specialized transducer, utilizing custom software to map the kinetic energy of a ball’s impact onto two distinct sonic datasets. When the ball strikes one side of the table, it triggers the acoustic rendering of gravitational waves—specifically the binary black hole merger detected by the LIGO interferometer in 2016—effectively allowing the player to “play” with the curvature of spacetime. Conversely, the opposing side responds with the vocalization of a gibbon recorded in the Southeast Asian jungle, juxtaposing the cold, mathematical precision of General Relativity with the raw, organic signals of biological evolution.

The physical architecture of the work replaces the standard net with a laser-etched plexiglass pane bearing the name of Stephen Hawking, serving as a symbolic event horizon that separates these two disparate realms. The performative aspect is dictated by a low-light environment where the equipment—treated with phosphorescent pigments—is excited by ultraviolet LEDs integrated into the table’s frame. This technical setup transforms the mechanical act of a ping-pong match into a high-speed exchange of “light packets” or quanta. By stripping away the visibility of the solid objects and leaving only their luminescent trajectories, Pozzi forces the participants to navigate a dark, probabilistic space where every volley becomes a rhythmic dialogue between the deepest echoes of the cosmos and the fleeting breath of the biosphere.