In this workshop at the WGXC Catskill Studio, participants will assemble their own pocket sized Community Portal transmission instruments for ancestral play and communication, inspired by ghost boxes, electronic spirit communication, and water and listening-based knowledge practices across the artist Natan Diacon-Furtado’s own Quaker, Sephardic Jewish, West African, Native Brazilian, settler, arrivant, and Indigenous ancestries. Sounds and messages received through these instruments during the workshop will be recorded and broadcast on WGXC as a collaborative sound collage.
Participants will also learn about the pcb antenna designs that receive and transmit radio waves in most of the “smart” objects in our lives and use this new knowledge to design and make tarot and oracle inspired antennas for their own pocket portals.
The pocket portal instruments and the process for making oracle antennas has been designed in collaboration with Fun Stuff Design, an industrial design studio specialized in novel sustainable materials and sustainable product development. Participants will each receive a case designed by Fun Stuff Design and Natan Diacon-Furtado to protect their pocket portals on whatever journeys come next.
Workshop registration fee: $25
Materials fee: $45
Natan Diacon-Furtado (all pronouns) is a collaborative artist and designer of visionary engineering projects that expand notions of ancestry and self through play. Trained as an anthropologist and architect, they are currently a doctoral candidate in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, USA. They have been the subject of two solo museum shows, at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre and Indiana University’s Wiley House Museum, with additional exhibitions at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Delft Architectural Biennial, and Buenos Aires Biennale of Architecture. In addition, their design work has been named one of the ‘World’s Greatest Places’ by TIME Magazine.
Fun Stuff Design is an industrial design studio specialized in novel sustainable materials and sustainable product development. They focus on biomaterials, climate tech, and objects that endure.
Julian Goldman is a designer and artist focused on the point at which novel technology and materials touch society. Dierdre Shea is an object designer with a background in ceramics, industrial design, novel materials, and the craft of manufacturing. She is interested in using her discipline to understand and develop meaningful, sustainable relationships between humans and products to reform and replace systems of mass production and material consumption.
