User:Angeliki/Grad project frequencies

B. A dialogue with the frequencies/ an invisible interlocutor

What do I want to make?

I want to make a series of approaches of getting familiar with the radio technology [frequencies and electromagnetic spectrum] and appropriate it from a different and more embodied perspective that contributes [subvert it beyond its dominant use] to the realisation of the mediation of the voice as a a way to become sth more than users (users have a distant relation with the medium though they are part of it). I will approach it as an 'other'/an invisible interlocutor. I want to create a dialogue with the frequencies as I am meeting a new person. My approach will be separated in two parallel parts. The first is about feedback iterations and construction of transmitters and receivers/antennas and the second about embodied exercises [getting familiar with the detachment of the voice].

How do I plan to make it?

I will conduct interviews with people that provoke these questions and imagining the radio from a different[feminist,..] perspective. I would like to ask them:

-How did you 'see' radio as a different tool than what is perceived to be?

-In what level of involvement are you in? Broadcasting, scanning, making radio stations, radio amateur license, pirate?

-How you realize the involvement of your voice and body in that?

-What is the effect/impact of your attempts/projects approaching this technology on bodies, communication and space?

-How your gender and social position affects your involvement?

I will engage with the specific technology by receiving signals, broadcasting, experimenting with the software and the hardware [antennas, SDR, transmitters,...]. I will answer questions with the purpose to gain more knowledge for it like: Where the frequencies come from [satellites, devices on earth, stations]? What is the range of it? How many of them involve voices?

Then I will propose ways of sharing knowledge that are not visible/accessible (like including our bodies and voices in the process). Those ways will be more clear after the experiments and the interviews.

All the process will be based on the idea of creating a dialogue with the frequencies [by using antennas to listen to the frequencies, to map them in the space, to interact with the community involved, to intervene to them, explore the communication through voice and its relation to the physical space and our bodies/to make it visible, to find my position in that]. I want to focus on frequencies including voice samples, to intimate the dialogue.

What is my timetable?

Until the end of January:

1. Building feedback structures: antennas and radio transmitter with the less medium (transceiving = transmitting and receiving). Documenting prototypes.

Trying these out in the public space including walking, disrupting the public rhythm and documenting observations, photos, videos, audio or text produced.

2. Do more experiments on reading, listening, repeating, walking with two or more people. Creating a metaphor with the body for the feedback structure of radio. The actions will be collective readings, deep listening exercises with a focus on the relation with the radio. Documenting observations and audio, video, photos, text produced

In the beginning of February:

3. Merging the two sides of the experiments. How the one knowledge affects/informs the other. What new knowledge can be gained.

4. Involve more people in the process. Invite them to share their personal relation to these experiments [how they perceive the mediation of their voice and their parallel presence] and use this material in the process. Merge my process with facts related to the city and the people involved (where is that process important or not). People that have a difficulty on language and people that are afraid of surveillance and frequencies or they perceive them as an alien fact. People that learning this technical aspect of radio, but also do experiments like that, will be useful for their daily lives and struggles. People that I meet at my outside experiments.

March:

proceed with what all the previous experiments will bring.

Why do I want to make it?

Because there is a dominant approach on those technologies [always creating different channels of communication] which, from my point of view, is limiting the potentials of such mediums regarding our bodies and subjectivities. The first questions that initialized my interest were:

- Why I don't know about using radio or about frequencies and the electromagnetic spectrum? This happens even though it is an interesting medium to me that gives access to another information and communication [existing for years and surrounding us/many communities are involved and develop it]? Is it because of the technical details, the legal constraints that makes it invisible or its context [cultural, social sphere around it]?

- How the gender affects our involvement to radio technologies and culture?

- What is our relation to antennas and radio? Is it only something that surrounds us and exists? It seems as an invisible "Big Brother" that surveil us, it's dangerous, military, it's male, it's scientific. There is still a strong bias and prejudice on frequencies [aliens, surveillance, ghosts] that strengthens the distance of involvement.

I am fascinated by the intensity/surprise it can provoke when receiving data with antennas in real-time/in space and listening to audio/or even see the traces of a frequency. But I am also very interested on how radio is a tool for mediating the embodied voice with the distant. / affect on space- affect on language

Who can help me and how?

-People I interview like Reni Hofmüller that can help me on experimenting with the specific technology and imagining other aspects of radio.

-Raadio Caargo can help me imagining potential futures [feminist futurotopias as they call it] by engaging with different related methodologies and practices. As they say: "reclaim our relationships with techniques and technologies, to subvert these techniques, to blur genders and blow up codes and rules: to interlock emerging worlds with appealing futures"

-Roel could help me with radio technology, understanding frequencies and electromagnetic spectrum

-Matt with references, prototyping [making antennas]

-Joana with prototyping [making embroidered antennas], references and discussion on embodied and distant voice

-Amy and Clara with deep listening

Relation to a larger context

There are several attempts [from feminists, artists, programmers, sociologists] of approaching hacking, technological cultures from a more feminist approach that involves the body, the vulnerabilities of the individual [text of hacking with care]. The radio is also used to empower communities and people to learn to make their own radio stations, share this knowledge. Many artists still find a reason to appropriate it.

I had a dream! [Amy]