ARCHIVE

Transmission Ecologies: Episode 29 - DXARTS Collective (Audio)

Feb 22, 2025

The DXARTS Collective is a group of students from the University of Washington with a mission to increase awareness about the latest trends in Digital Art and Experimental Media. Their objective also includes promoting creative collaboration among individuals with diverse skill sets.

Frequencies of Full Bloom & Wither is a research based curation of natural phenomena. Although electromagnetic fields are commonly viewed as artificial entities, these frequencies are a natural part of our environment. As humans, we forget about the existence of this realm because it is invisible to our senses. Our project aims to highlight the hidden electromagnetic world through collection, documentation, and translation. We emphasize our alternative view of EMF by navigating the collection processes within the metaphor of picking fruit, taking plant cuttings, or collecting seeds. This particular piece stages an assortment of samples which portray the diverse range of signal. Our composition treats each sample as part of a lifecycle, such as that of a seed turning into a plant. We focus on four important portions of this lifecycle: Seed, Growth, Maturity, and Decay.

Frequency as natural, as temporal, as ripe.

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).