Electromagnetic waves artificial or natural, light waves, psychic waves that travel across our bodies and landscapes, of animated or inanimate elements. We say that they are eternal and that they never die, they wander forever in the cosmos when they manage to escape our atmosphere. They are different in nature and size, constituted of vibrations born from the encounter of electronic and magnetic fields. Apart from visible light, they are invisible to the eye, they travel in vacuum at the speed of light and are absorbed by conductive surfaces that they use as antennas to propagate. They reconnect our voices, conversations, messages, sounds and data through sophisticated devices or hand-crafted ones made of copper wires, electronic components, earth and water. Some investigators of the invisible can read the vibrations of a site or a person according to the organization of the planets and their telluric energy. Some read the ether from their observatory by reflecting, absorbing, refracting the electromagnetic waves in our atmosphere. Others have managed to operate their bodies as radio antennas by tuning to the different frequencies of the electromagnetic environment and sending their radiant energy as forms of etheric consciousness. They say that space and time do not exist in the world of waves, that we can connect and transmute our presences by them. We will for these 60 minutes travel together in the ethers and meet some of these investigators who have connected through the electromagnetic waves at the art and agricultural land of Kerminy in Bretagne, France, on the 8th of August, at 7.30 PM to 10.00 PM in the year two thousand and twenty one. “Oscillations (Claire Williams & Julien Poidevin) is a live sonic performance that uses our Ethernet lines and communicating machines as a canal to interact with the electromagnetic waves and vibrations that surround us. Sound is used to modulate space and time as machines, antennas, radios, microphones and bods to stream these ethereal vibrations taken from different locations on the earth and from our atmosphere in real time.”

The artworks of Claire Williams are at the crossroads of craft, sound and electronics. Her installations try to sense the multiple variations in our electromagnetic spectrum taking the form of woven antennas or embroidered radios. Data of radio scanners or radio telescopes materialise themselves in knitted stitches, sound, vibrations or through luminous plasma. She creates installations that combine craft and electronics where she sculpts her electronic components to make visible the electromagnetic movements of our magnetosphere or the solar activity. She is currently working on the exploration of the ethers, at the crossroads of experimental and occult science practices. In this way she explores our relationship to the world of the invisible and their instruments by reviving abandoned leads of certain scientific and researches of the mid 19th century. Collaborators on the show: ooooo, Ana Elena Tejera, Deborah Levy.

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).