STWST48x7: Adriana Knouf and Franz Xaver on the Hertzian Space

As an introduction to the STWST48x7-Project Make me a Signal, artists Adriana Knouf and Franz Xaver talk about the Hertzian space.

Since 2009, the Messschiff Eleonore, once a survey vessel, has been docked at the Danube harbor in Linz, powered by solar energy, equipped with radio components and modified to host artists in residency as part of Stadwerkstatt’s InfoLab activities. The radio beacons of Eleonore operate two transmitters – a 7 Mhz short-wave sending through WSPRnet and the geostationary satellite rising star Es’hail QO100. Both transmitters operate in different frequency ranges with the invisible electromagnetic space directly connected to the haptic world only via antennas.

Cyberhacking, viral-pandemic living, a desire for autonomy from cyber-hegemony—the Hertzian waves of the electromagnetic spectrum manifest potentials to swerve away from centralized life. Tied to the electro-dynamics of the earth-sky-solar-galactic nexus, radio transceiving can utilize simple circuits that engender wide-ranging effects. To prepare ourselves for times to come – when our fragile digital networks may no longer function properly and the EM spectrum becomes our primary way to signal each other – the durational radio program, MAKE ME A SIGNAL – Prelude to a RADIOTOPIA, materializes an experimental set of approaches to the wideband radio spectrum that make artistic concepts real and that may in turn become new ways of being in our possible futures.