Honor Harger.
Artist working with r a d i o q u a l i a, New Zealand
Director of AV Festival, UK
Broadcasting the Music of the Spheres: Understanding astronomy through art, audification and radio
About the Research
Harger's central research question is: How can using radio as an agent of audification create insights into astronomical and other electromagnetic phenomena?
Her research will examine how analogue audification using radio can make astronomical space audible. This has initially been illustrated in the project, Radio Astronomy
Our understanding of our world and our cosmos has been transformed by the study of radio waves. With the invention of telecommunication technology at the end of the 19th century, radio became a tool for rethinking the world we live in. Radio collapsed geographical distance, crossed borders and cultures and became a powerful catalyst for commerce. From the 1930s onward, radio enabled scientists to study the cosmos in entirely new ways. Radio has, in effect, created an electromagnetic 'portrait' of our world. We can not only look at this portrayal, but by employing the very technology which Marconi and Tesla brought into being, we can also listen.
I have begun by tracing the twin histories of radio telecommunications and radio astronomy from Hertz's work on the radio wave, to Penzias & Wilson's 'accidental' discovery of radiation from the Big Bang, demonstrating how radio has been used to deepen scientists' understanding of our universe. Referencing alternative artistic histories of radio, I am continuing my exploration by attempting to illustrate how radio has been used to reveal the hidden aural attributes of the electromagnetic spectrum.
I refer to the taxonomies of sonification developed in Auditory Display researchers and have also developed a personal ontology of radio.
About the Researcher
Honor Harger is an artist and curator. She was born and educated in New Zealand, and has lived in Europe since 1999. She is one of the two artists who run r a d i o q u a l i a, an art group that works in the fields of digital art and radio art, net.radio. r a d i o q u a l i a have exhibited at the NTT ICC in Tokyo, New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; "Gallery 9" at the Walker Art Center, USA; Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris, France; "Sonar", Barcelona, Spain; and "Ars Electronica", Linz, Austria, among other places.
Harger is also presently the director of the AV Festival in the North East of England, and in the past has worked for Tate Modern in the UK, ANAT in Adelaide, Australia and Artspace in New Zealand, as well as curating indedepently.
Radio Astronomy
www.radio-astronomy.net
r a d i o q u a l i a
www.radioqualia.net
AV Festival
www.avfest.co.uk
In cooperation with
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