This episode is largely based on the panel discussion Making Textile EM which took place on Friday, 16 September 2022 between Erin Lewis, Irene Posch and Afroditi Psarra in the context of the online symposium Folding: Structural Materiality in Textiles and Electromagnetics. Parts of the conversation have been mixed with field recordings and found footage from the Signal Identification Wiki. Check tracklist for more details.

Irene Posch is a researcher and artist with a background in media and computer science. Her work explores the integration of technological development into the fields of art and craft, and vice versa, and social, cultural, technical and aesthetic implications thereof. She is a Professor of Design & Technology at the University of Art and Design Linz.

Erin Lewis is a PhD candidate in Textile Interaction Design at The Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås. Her PhD research explores the interactive space between structural textile design and electromagnetic fields. She employs artistic methods and designs custom electronic tools to explore the aesthetic and expressional possibilities of this otherwise non-visual and intangible phenomena. Prior to her studies in Sweden, Erin was a researcher and instructor of wearable technologies in the Faculty of Design at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada. She previously held the position of Education Manager at Canada’s leading new media art gallery, Inter/Access, in Toronto.

Curated by Afroditi Psarra, "Transmission Ecologies" explores the turbulent world of radio signals which propagate around us. Each show features a guest sound artist who broadcasts their radio experiments using EMFs, interference patterns from devices, HAM, RF field recordings, satellite signals, space astronomy research, etc. to formulate their interpretations, compositions, and translations of the invisible and unheard layer of telecommunication technologies.

"Transmission Ecologies" is commissioned by Stegi Radio / Onassis Culture.

Afroditi Psarra is a multidisciplinary artist and an Associate Professor of Digital Arts and Experimental Media at the University of Washington where she runs the DXARTS Softlab. Her research focuses on the interweaving of art and science through the creation of artifacts with a critical lens. In her projects she explores energetic phenomena like electromagnetic radiation, and technologies such as radio-frequency sensing, fractal antennas, and software-defined radio. She is particularly interested in the use of the body as an interface of control, and the revitalization of tradition as a methodology of hacking existing norms about technical objects. Her art practice builds on and extends the work of Cyber and Techno-Feminism(s) and the idea of bodies as archives of information, and manifests through e-textiles and wearables, performances, installations and sound art.

She has exhibited her work internationally in venues such as Onassis Stegi, Bozar, Laboral, EMST, Ars Electronica, Transmediale and CTM, Eyeo, Amber, Piksel, and WRO Biennale between others, and published at conferences like Siggraph, ISWC (International Symposium of Wearable Computers), DIS (Designing Interactive Systems), C&C (Creativity and Cognition), and EVA (Electronic Visualization and the Arts).