FRITZ KISTE, 2014

TouchRadio 103, 2014
http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio103.mp3

Since technical evolution tends to unfold rapidly, human beings have not been able to evolve a (forewarning) sense of new forms of technology (for instance to detect radioactivity). Electronic emissions are also not sensually detectable. No one knows exactly how the technology of “wireless transmitting devices” affects humans. Radio, television, radiotelephones, mobile phones, GPS, computers, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi routers flood every place on earth with countless electronic waves.

“Recordings” of a standard Wi-Fi router serve as the basis for the sound work “Fritz Kiste”. One can’t speak of regular (audio) recordings since the electronic Wi-Fi waves are soundless. But their electronic energy waves trigger the sensitive microphones of a D-40 Tascam recorder. The device is equipped with two microphones, each placed directly at one of the two antenna transmitting the Wi-Fi signal of the router – thus recording a “stereo signal” on the left and right audio recording channel.

The Wi-Fi router transmits at 3.4 MHz, thus generates 3.4 billion cycles per second. The actual reception of the signals - e.g. recorded during the transmission of an email with an image attachment - are only a few seconds long, but are prolonged through ever deeper analysis. The fragmentation was achieved via different digital and analogue processes and via “deceleration”. Thus fragments of a second were distended to minutes in length. In this way the router‘s timing-in-seconds, much too fast for human perception, becomes open to scrutiny. The resulting sounds are partly “technoid” by which sounds are very much dependent on the timing. Sounds emerge at a high transmission activity while sending pauses sound more “ambient”.