Antennabodies is a collection of wearable antennas that can be used to map our electromagnetic surroundings.
Despite pop-culture imagery associated with The Cloud, WiFi has a very material and tangible provenance. From minerals and metals to its radiant energy, there’s a very blunt aspect of this entanglement of culture and infrastructure that is physical and extends into surrounding bodies.
This is true of any and all forms of electromagnetic transmissions; the process of transmitting and receiving electromagnetic signals is very physical: matter moves in rhythms syncopated by the speed of light and the dimensions of the materials it traverses. Antennas are designed with specific shapes and sizes optimized for particular types of transmissions and their corresponding frequencies. For example, 2.4GHz WiFi signals are better picked up by antennas with lengths that are a multiple of 31.25mm.
In our world of embedded, pervasive, wearable technologies we are encompassed by such a variety of signals that we can think of this relationship from a different perspective: given different objects of specific shapes and sizes, what are the signals that reverberate with their bodies? Can we (re-)sensitize ourselves to these meshes of planetary reach and affect?
These wearable antennas made of copper and brass pieces are modeled after the shapes and sizes of body parts, sections, appendages, etc. They are meant to be worn around the part of the body from which they were modeled, creating a connection between the original template body and that of the wearer.
These antenna objects suggest a more embodied form of navigating a network. They are ontological machines for mapping the relationships between humans, nature, culture, objects and networks, and making these intra-actions a little more significantly felt.
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