“Aeolian Radio” uses a kinetic pendulum antenna sculpture, vocals, field recordings, and live electronics to produce a wide-ranging exploration of radio frequencies, interference rhythms, and vocal timbres. Through polarity shifts, the pendulum creates an interference rhythm that the artists take as a starting point for developing the work in three sections. Thrän and Hertz perform alongside and embody these rhythms, vocalizing in consonance and dissonance with its signals and static. Successive studio sessions with the sculpture led to the development of a number of custom performance interfaces, through which the voice and antenna meld with, and augment, each other in surprising and generative ways. The term “Aeolian” evokes the classical Aeolian harp — an instrument played by the wind — drawing a parallel between natural wind energy and the invisible electromagnetic winds that “Aeolian Radio” harnesses. This piece asks: what happens when the frequency range we make ourselves sensitive to is expanded to include these more-than-human winds? How do the rhythms of non-human entities interfere with, highlight, amplify, or cancel out our human patterns? “Aeolian Radio” is an experiment that develops as a fever dream where these contrasting rhythms form a dense ecosystem, switching between the natural, the artificial, and the unplaceable. 

The work was recorded and edited in the Onassis ONX Studios in New York City, US. 

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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).