Fresh Awards Gold Winner, Digital Breakthrough category

Wireless technology has great significance within our society, as a vehicle for networking, yet it is immaterial; we are unaware of its shape and form and its effects on us. As John Cage (2010), poignantly suggests, “We are bathed in radio waves”.
Since we cannot experience it directly through our senses, it is a subject, which is still being debated and developed in all its guises.

This study explores these invisible electronic fields to help us understand its properties, characteristics and infrastructure as a visual language.

This invisible terrain is brought to life using a variety of experimentation; from manipulation and human interaction, to painting this invisible landscape in various locations, from the countryside, to the city, using a light painting technique to measure wireless fidelity’s signal strength.

Bathed in radio waves exhibition installationAn interactive installation that expresses the concept of humans being “bathed in radio waves” John Cage (2010), using a dark room filled with LED lit rods indicating the wireless fidelity’s signal strength in the area.
As you walk around in this digital sea of radio waves, the wireless fidelity’s signal strength alters around you. You begin to realise your own human body is being used to manipulate these signals.

Your body reduces them when you are in between the wifi provider (in the centre of the room) and its detectors (scattered around the room).

This human interaction allows one to question whether these invisible waves penetrate through us, and whether this advanced technology in modern society is more beneficial or detrimental to us.

Light painting photography
Long-exposure photography using a light painting technique originally by nearfield, to test whether immaterials are everywhere, from the countryside to the forest, rather than just the city.

External Credits
Nearfield / Yourban The ‘WiFi signal strength detector’ is initially by nearfield’s project yourban onimmaterials, in which engineer Darren Lewis and I re-developed from scratch and to better the technology further, to be used to push new boundaries.