Description:

Antennology is a research project that explores antennae as cultural techniques that bind together cosmos, climate, geology and media. The project traces how engineered antennae transform imperceptible electromagnetic forces into images, data and aesthetic experience, and how, in turn, these media forms feed back into our sense of environment, scale and time. Drawing analogies between biological and technical antennae, and working at the intersection of media theory, visual culture and artistic practice, the project treats antennae as operative chains that filter, translate and recursively re-mediate an “elemental” real that remains otherwise beyond direct perception. Led by Yanai Toister and Nimrod Astarhan (co-PIs) Antennology develops both conceptual tools and visual experiments for thinking “electromagnetic memory” – the ways in which infrastructures register, store and replay the energies that surround us.

Forthcoming article:

Nimrod Astarhan and Yanai Toister. “Antennelogy: Cosmos to Canvas”. Leonardo (forthcoming 2026). Herein we articulate antennae as cultural techniques and elemental media, using the VLA and The Lightning Field as primary case studies to rethink mediation, recursion and the articulation of an imperceptible electromagnetic real

Interactive web artwork:

A browser-based interactive work that allows viewers to navigate constellations of biological, infrastructural and artistic antennae, revealing how different forms, scales and materials condition the capture and circulation of electromagnetic signals.

Follow up article:

“Knowable, Imperceptible, Monumental: Considering Electromagnetic Memory” develops the notion of electromagnetic memory, examining how antenna-based systems inscribe and monumentalise otherwise imperceptible energies across scientific, environmental and artistic contexts.

Project support: 

Initial support provided by the Fund for Independent Creativity.