Invisible Geographies 50MHz-6000MHz
Late at the Tate Britain (Tate Britain)
2/1/2009
On Friday 2 January 2009, John Wild, psychogeographer of dataSPACE, became both a conduit and guide, leading a drift through the invisible geographies of microwave communications. The performance started inside Tate Britain before traversing Vauxhall Bridge to the towering monolith of Terry Farrell’s New-Babylonian ziggurat, the SIS (Mi6) Building.
The performance had four distinct phases.
1) An exploration of Tata Modern’s wireless communications networks.
2) Listening to London’s skyline whilst walked across Vauxhall Bridge. This was characterized by the intense noise of electromagnetic communications beamed from London’s Tower Blocks and Office Buildings which were received and made audible by John Wild’s microwave receivers.
3) Silence at the foot of the SIS building. The effect of the SIS building was to block out the electromagnetic communications, silencing the microwave receivers, creating an eerie quiet reminiscent of entering a sacred site.
4) Listening to Millbank Tower from the beach of the Themes. The drift was lead around the SIS building and down onto the beach to the Themes. The performance concluded by listening to the erratic and intense texture of data transmitted from Millbank Tower with the inky black of the Themes at our feet.