We met artist Martine-Nicole Rojina at the Abbey Road Hackathon last year, whose practice has led to a close-knit art-science-innovation partnership with the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory, Netherlands. She shares her story of Sister Moon live at Abbey Road and how she bounced around 50 visionaries from the surface of the moon from the isolation booth of Abbey Road's Studio One.

Imagine you could travel at the speed of light, leave mother Earth behind, into space…

In approximately 1.25 seconds, after roughly 384,402 kilometers, you arrive at our closest celestial companion: Sister Moon.

How would you greet her? What would you say? How would you sound?

Imagine, she would answer and echo your words and sounds back to Earth.

Reflected by her dusty grey-shaded surface, her craters, mountains, valleys and rocks.

The moment I entered Abbey Road Studios I could literally feel the vibration of all the absorbed creative and innovative minds speaking to me from every corner of the studios. I guess this will never change as it is a truly mesmerizing place for me, being a professional musician, composer, producer and sound engineer myself. I am profoundly in love with music, art, technology, science, innovation and waves. Abbey Road Studios pioneered and wrote culture and innovation history and still continues!

Having said that it is not very easy to describe what it meant to me, my wonderful HAM radio astronomer colleagues Jan van Muijlwijk, and Harry Keizer of CAMRAS and everyone who joined us to the moon and back. It was beyond this world and a memory which will last forever. We were all together so excited and happy, it lasted for about a week to come back on the ground of the daily “reality”. We shaped the innovation history of Abbey Road together. This is a life-dream coming true.

There is certain magic in watching how the expression of the faces change once they hear their voice, sound or instrument being reflected off the moon! It is an exciting process. You are using one of the world's first radio astronomy antennas, a beautiful 25 metres in diameter, parabolic moving dish completed in 1956 and restored in 2012, to talk to Sister Moon and hear her reflection.

But it also requires focus as you have to fit your message length into approximately 2.5 seconds. Otherwise the beginning of your echo will be “overwritten”, as the reflection obviously continues. Depending on the distance of Sister Moon, the echo will take between 2.3 to 2.7 seconds as we modulate radio waves and they travel at the speed of light.

At a Sister Moon live moonbounce event the process is the following:

I will briefly explain you what will happen and show you a picture of the Dwingeloo telescope pointing at the moon. You will be invited to sit in front of my beautiful grey 1972 Sennheiser MD 421 microphone and use my headphones. Both are connected to the Dwingeloo cabin via a real time internet connection. You will see Jan and Harry on the screen operating the telescope and explaining you that “first you will hear some noise and then I will tell you to go ahead”. You as the moonbouncer wait attentively, hear the noise, hear Jan giving the go and see Harry with thumbs up, speak and then the magic happens! Eyes full of pure awe in the moment you realize that your voice just traveled approximately 800 000 kilometers to the moon and echoed back to earth.

After every session, I am totally “high”, flying with around 50 people to the moon and back. You can imagine the feeling.

What's the future of Sister Moon? I still need to answer that!
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Listen to several of the Moonbounce examples from Abbey Road Red Hackathon below or for the full list go to:
http://sistermoon.space

Martine-Nicole Rojina is a professional music- and immersive multimedia content producer and consultant for immersive AV innovation, VR, AR & future technology.

Her curiosity and empathy for technology, science, engineering, economy, art and education are the core drivers of her MPATHY STUDIO, therefore consulting the European Commission and Parliament on STARTS – science, technology and the arts to foster holistic innovation.

As co-founder and transdisciplinary project manager of the global private aerospace coalition BEING IN SYNERGY and as civil astronaut training advisor for SPACE FOR HUMANITY, she lays a collective ground for the future of space exploration, travel and education.