Aelectrosonic Truss 2025, site specific sonic sculpture The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Desert Research Station, Hinkley, CA
Exhibition run: Jan 11 – Mar 15, 2025
Steve Badgett & Deborah Stratman
Project Description Aelectrosonic Truss is a Very Low Frequency (VLF) induction loop antenna sensing the resonant habits of the sky. The truss pivots on its vertical access to adjust reception of the invisible waves emanating continuously from human and non-human sources.
Nine and a half miles of copper wire coiled around the steerable framework harvest energy directly from the air to power a speaker. The antenna coil sympathetically vibrates to radio frequencies related to its length. As with passive Aeolian instruments activated by the wind, the truss passively receives natural electromagnetic vibrations generated by distant lightning strikes, aurora, solar storms and other ionospheric fluctuations—radio that existed before ‘the radio’ was invented, aka Natural Radio—as well as manmade signals including submarine communications and long-distance power transmission infrastructure.
Induction loop antennas are sensitive to the magnetic part, or “H-field,” of electromagnetic waves. The job of the wire coils is to cut magnetic field lines and induce signal in the loop. The antenna coil transforms electromagnetic activity into electrical activity and serves as an alternative power source, gathering energy from the air to amplify the signal it resonates to.
