Listening Space is an on-going artistic research that was born during eTextile Spring Break 2019 between Afroditi Psarra and e-textile designer and co-founder of the Datapaulette hackerspace in Paris, Audrey Briot.

This project explores transmission ecologies as a means of perceiving the surrounding environment beyond our human abilities. Conceptually the project seeks to define satellite data as raw material for artistic expression, to understand and re-imagine in poetic means, representations of audio and images broadcasted from space, using body movement and gesture as actuators to explore remote sensing.

Driven by our previous explorations in non-verbal communication systems, we set out to explore RF detection, while considering the human body as an interface for sensing the invisible universe that surrounds us. By investigating the energies that have been harvested by humanity to knit this complex layer, a turbulent sea of radio waves that penetrates the fabric of our everyday lives even if it remains unseen and unheard, we aim to create poetic connotations between the sonic qualities of data collection and archiving, and bodies as agents of power to re-interpret current technologies.

Specifically, the ecologies of transmission that comprise the Radio Spectrum, are no doubt the ultimate expression of the Anthropocene, as they permit the operation of human life as we know it (telecommunications, environmental monitoring, radio astronomy, FM/AM radio, etc) and shape our understanding of the planet.

In this context, Listening Space seeks to explore satellite transmissions as discrete embodied machines, by observing their liveness at a rhythm dictated by their orbit.