Colin Black writes, "Nikola Tesla was a brilliant engineer and eccentric who is considered to be the inventor of radio and alternating current. However, his greatest love was not technology, but a pigeon. Avian Love is a sound composition for radio about Tesla’s love for his beloved pigeon that is full of electricity and electrifying feelings.

In New York, there is a sign at the corner of 6th Avenue and West 40th Street: 'Nikola Tesla Corner.' Between 1884 and 1943, the inventor stopped by here countless times to feed pigeons. Sometimes he took sick animals to the hotel where he lived permanently. There he nursed them back to health.

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life. Her eyes shone more to Tesla than any invention he had developed in his lab."

Colin Black celebrates Tesla's dove in a composition of sounds and music.

Colin Black is a composer based in Australia. In 2003 he received the Prix Italia in the Radio Music category and in 2015 the Gold Award at the New York Festival. As part of his doctoral thesis at the University of Sydney, he researched the history of radiophonic sound art.

Credits: Produced, composed, recorded and mixed by Colin Black. Première broadcast: Deutschlandradio Kultur, 6 January 2023. Recordings of electromagnetic fields: Tin Dožic. Cognitive science advisor: Dayana Hristova. Production: Deutschlandfunk Kultur 2022. Length: 49'42. Special thanks to Marcus Gammel, Dayana Hristova, Tin Dožic, Brane Zorman, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and CONA – institute for contemporary arts processing in Ljubljana. Avian Love by Colin Black is presented here courtesy of Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Tune in for selections from Wave Farm's Transmission Art Archive, a specialized online resource of artists' experiments with the electromagnetic spectrum in form or concept. The resource contains primary materials from early microradio broadcast collaborations among Brooklyn-based artists in the mid-nineties, transmission works created by the hundreds of artists who have participated in Wave Farm projects, broadcasts, and residencies, as well as historical and contemporary projects that comprise the canon of the genre.

Visit the Transmission Art Archive here.