Making Science's 'Other' Productive

Although the dominant mode of technoscientific 'invention' at the turn to the 20th century was based on rationalism it also brought about its flipside of electromagnetic esotericism. Telegraphy and radio triggered a new age of spiritism.1 Positivism was on the rise and tried to draw a line between real science and crackpot science with its according philosophical superstructures (positivism vs. vitalism and idealism). But, as much as science tried to purge itself from the forces of irrationalism, its less irrational 'other' would not go away easily. First, science needed a close relationship with engineering and much more low level craft work to produce its instruments. Scientific discoveries which were presented as clean and completely rational types of knowledge, abstracted from the everyday experience of a politically messy times, relied on types of knowledge that were tacit, which came from the experiences of craftsmen and women and were never formalized as a theory.2 Second, science also produced truths which seemed irrational to the common man. As the dromologist Paul Virilio remarked, Max Planck's Quantum Theory, postulated in 1900, seemed "irrational to the rational man." (Virilio 1994, p. 23)

I propose to make the schizophrenia of science at the dawn of the age of radio productive for any further artistic investigations into the medium. Artists can re-engage with aspects of early radio science -- earlier thesises, discoveries and speculations which have fallen by the wayside of scientific progress driven by an ultraharsh utlitarianism dictated by buerocratic-capitalistic regime of efficiency. Artists don't need to adhere to the 'productivist dogma', and do not need to be afraid of being labelled esotericists themselves (this would be a grave misunderstanding of my proposition). And artists do not need to buy into a gentrified version of the history of science. The spirit of practical experimentation with electromagntic fields and the tools to do so such as areals, coils, magnets, copper wire, and so on, offer themselves to be materials for the arts, as they do not only provide a functionality but also have aesthetic qualities as objects, surfaces, materials. Concepts such as the luminiferous aether, which was first postulated to exist, then, after Einstein's first publication thought not to exist and now has entered scientific discourse through the backdoor of advanced quantum cosmology again offers interesting starting points, especially because there remain scientific riddles and problems to solve about the nature of matter, time, space and other quite fundamental categories.3

Artists have already shown to create very interesting work with the crumbs that fell from the lavishly decked out table of science. Douglas Kahn writes about naturally occuring very low frequencies and the work of Australian artist Joye Hinterdings with VLF in this volume. At the exhibition Waves in Riga, (Medosch, Šmite, Šmits, 2006) Austrian artist Franz Xaver reminded us that the sun is the biggest 'radio' in our solar system. At the entrance to his exhibition cubicle he wrote defiantly in a little hand written message on a piece of paper "what are 10 years of internet compared to 10 millions of years of radiation from the sun". Another Austrian artist, Udo Wid, has made measurements of naturally occuring Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF) for many years and tries to draw connections with brainwave activities and psychotropic influences of ELF on humans. It is not important if Wid ever finds any strict causal link between ELF and brainwaves -- which would be the scientific approach --, the work as such and the output it generates is interesting in itself (Wid generates plots of his measurements by using neural network software) and has a humanistic quality through the references that Wid makes in his Polihymnia concept.4 Recently at the Maxwell City workshop by Atelier Nord in Oslo, Martin Howse built strangely interesting looking devices which allow to measure electromagnetic waves in the high frequency spectrum from electricity lines in the environment and translating them into audio.5 Such unintentional leakage of em-waves happens all the time, on a small scale in our homes, and on a much larger one next to big overland power lines or electrified trainlines and tramways.6

• 1. Even now, images of Tesla in his laboratory evoke associations with alchemism (Image of Tesla in his laboratory); regarding the connection between electromagnetism and spiritualism, cf. Becker 2006 Theaters of Possession, Dangerous Transcommunications [conference talk]. Waves RIX-C: Riga. (synopsis available from, last accessed August 2007); for a deep history of s cience and alchemy cf. Yates 1979/2001.
• 2. cf. Benjamin Farrington about the origins of Greek Science (1954)
• 3. cf. Howse 2007 The aether and its double(available online last accessed August 2007)
• 4. cf. Udo Wid, Forschungen, Ausstellungskatalog (undatiert). Galerie Unwahr: Berlin
• 5. Maxwell City, Workshop, Atelier Nord, Erich Berger and Martin Howse, last accessed August 2007
• 6. The exhibition Waves in Riga tried to give a panoramic overview of artists engaging with 'pure waves' - waves not as carriers of spoken language as in radio transmissions but waves freed from any such 'payload', waves as a material and medium of art. (cf. Medosch, Šmite, Šmits, 2006).