This choir of sculpture antennas, with air as a co-creator, performed live at the Takis Foundation Reseach Centre for the Art and Sciences, Athens, Greece. September 4-10 and 16-20, 2024.
“ If only with an instrument like radar I could capture the music of the beyond.”
TAKIS
These three copper sculpture aerials respond in song to electromagnetic signals in the air around us.
Electromagnetic energy is bombarding the planet, but bounces off an invisible shield surrounding Earth. This causes vibrations in the atmospheres. Seen near the poles as Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights. This eletromagnetic energy is around at all times, in the active void we know as air.
Animals with wider hearing range than humans can sense the vibrations, and seem to react to it, can they understand it in a way humans cannot? What if we use technology to translate that active void. And compose something like sound?
The Sounds of Air: AI and Art at the Takis Foundation
The electromagnetic vibrations were picked up by the copper antenna and interpreted by AI software into human voices and music and composed by use of the shapes of the copper sculptures. Each sculpture signals its own sound resonating through wooden sound boxes. This is then played back into the atmosphere, reverberating with the Takis sculptures and natural world in the mountains around Athens. In the silence, feedback and air vibrations were picked up again from by the antenna as they listened and broadcast the surrounding song playing in the air.
Shirley Renwick’s Copper Sculptures: A Sonic Journey
“Air is invisible and silent most of the time to us, I use any material and technology I can to try to increase perception of air’s events and performances. I create sensitive sculptures which explore happenings in air. In this work I focus on the electromagnetic in air. “
“Takis was the artistic leader in this area and it was important for me to research at this vitally significant magnetic mountain site, revered for thousands of years in Athens, and where he lived and worked.
His use of electromagnetism was a vital shift in art focus from the object to the immaterial. Just as other artists focused on it in painting the negative space, in sculpture with the expanded field.
This space between, is where I am exploring in art and in air. The relationships between things, the materiality of air, the energy flow, the hidden power is endlessly intriguing to me.”
“Takis described the noise his works created as the sounds of the universe. I wanted to respond to this part of Takis’s art. Recently the European Space Agency recorded sounds of the electromagnetic force field around Earth. This immense force field protects the planet from solar flares. Each assault causes vibrations which resonate around us in the air. We can see this at night sometimes as the Northern Lights, but electromagnetism is around us all the time. We just don’t see it or hear its vibrations with our limited human senses. But we are at a turning point with technology where we can expand our perception using sensors and satellites.
“I feel a sense of gratitude in this idea of being protected from something terrifyingly tremendous continuously. I wanted to reach out to this powerful protecting force. While in Athens it is difficult to escape the gods, goddesses. myths and legends of the west. There were many gods of air. I can only imagine the horror historical people would have for the way we treat air today. These three graces of air frolic with the active void around us and give us its messages. Not that it makes much sense to us humans! They formed an antenna choir which includes all the other sounds in the space and the air, including feedback and birds and vibrations we do not understand.”
“Sometimes we feel this energy in the body as it causes energy to move around, which then causes changes in emotions. Takis I think recognised this, he used magnets directly on his body, certain they helped in his healing.
Today copper is used in healthcare, some people wear copper bracelets convinced it moves internal energy. What is the connection with body energy and magnetism? This bodily response to the otherworldly?
I created copper antenna in response to bodily energy flows. Anger moves energy to the upper body, head and fists, or does the energy flow to the upper body and fists cause anger? Love is felt as an upper middle body increase in heat and energy. Or does the energy movement cause love?” Curiosity is felt lower in the body in the erogenous zones, and the head, a mental kind of libidinal attraction. Thinking is sexy.
The Sounds of Air: AI and Art at the Takis Foundation Live Performances at Takis Foundation: A Unique Art Experience
Recording of live soundtrack The Sounds of the Air premiered in Paris, November 2024, to celebrate the event of Takis 100 years retrospective at the White Cube, Paris. Sign up for release date here.
Shirley Renwick 