Listening Space

[afrdt]

title: 'Listening Space'
about: Streamed performance using software-defined radio (SDR) and handmade antennas
labels: performance, software-defined radio, radio communications, NOAA, transmission ecology, antennas, e-textiles, space, environment, communication networks, digital crafts, open-source tools, DIY electronics, citizen science
assignees: Audrey Briot, Afroditi Psarra

## Description

Listening Space is an artistic research that explores transmission ecologies as a means of perceiving the surrounding environment beyond our human abilities. Conceptually the project seeks to define transmissions ecologies as raw material for artistic expression, to understand and re-imagine in poetic means, representations of audio and images broadcasted from space. The artists are creating cyber physical systems for sensing the invisible universe that surrounds us. By using open-source tools, DIY electronics, hardware hacking and digital crafts, they aim to approach art and science and create artifacts that explore the idea of citizen science. Specifically, by focusing on electromagnetic-field (EMF) and radio frequency (RF) detection, they aim to re-claim the depth of transmission ecologies, evolving at a higher rhythm than liveness, through our environment and bodies.

This session proposes a series of two streamed performances where the artists record and decode NOAA satellite transmissions in real-time from their respective locations.

Type: [ streamed performance ]
Length: [ 30 minutes ]
Date: [ between August 7-9 ]
Duration: [ twice (One performance in France and one in the US, or Greece)
Exact dates and times will be determined by the quality of satellite passes in our respective locations (usually known 10 days in advance from n2yo.com)]
Languages: [ english | french | greek ]

## Objective

The aim of this performance is to share in real-time the process of listening, intercepting and decoding satellite data, and to make this process into a participatory experience. The participants will engage with software-defined radio techniques, will learn about DIY antennas, and RF sensing. The satellite transmissions are sonic, and rhythmical so sound will be a prominent feature of the performance. Our ultimate goal is to plant the seeds on hacking telecommunication systems through diy techniques, initiate a discussion on transmission ecologies, and along the way, to create an immersive shared experience about the invisible information networks that surround us. Lastly, the recorded transmissions will be shared with the public both in a .wav and in a .png format as an archive of the lived experience, which they can further use/manipulate for other research and art practices.

## Material and Technical Requirements

Platform: [streaming service (Youtube, or Twitch) and/or videoconference (Jitsi Meet, or Zoom)]
Technical considerations: [anyone can join]
Additional considerations: [if Our Networks has an (ad-free) Twitch account which we could use to stream through there it'd be great, otherwise we would most likely go with Youtube]

## Presenters

Name: Audrey Briot
Email: [email protected]
Url(s): audreybriot.fr , datapaulette.org
Twitter: @audreybriot
GitHub: AudreyBriot

Name: Afroditi Psarra
Email: [email protected]
Url(s): afroditipsarra.com, dxarts softlab
Twitter: @afroditi_stereo
GitHub: afrdt

## Presenters' Bios

Textile designer and technologist, Audrey Briot (FR) is cofounder of DataPaulette, a collective and hackerspace focused on research and development in textiles and digital technologies.
Her work is dedicated to the impact of emerging technologies on the preservation of textiles savoir-faire. She is focusing on non-verbal communications transmitted by textiles which represent for her a substitute of writing. She relies on anthropological researches in order to formulate textiles as memory vectors, adding data and interactivity.

Afroditi Psarra (GR) is an Athenian-born multidisciplinary artist, currently based in Seattle, WA. Her research focuses on the creation of artifacts through critical discourse. She is 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. She uses cyber crafts and other gendered practices as speculative strings, and open-source technologies as educational models of diffusing knowledge.