Tweeting Antennas is a site-specific installation that explores the relationship between new and old media in today’s hybrid public spaces.
It proposes to render visible the digital communication processes that are usually invisible.
In particular, it translates geo-located tweets into the real-time movement of a roof TV antenna.
For each alphabetic character the antenna moves into the corresponding position of the Flag Semaphore System.
The project is the outcome of a research on the relationships between people and technology in the urban space.
In today’s cities, new media and digital technologies are used mostly for surveillance, control and advertising purposes. However, we are not usually aware of technological ubiquity in the city and how it conditions our experience of urban space. Eventually, by becoming more organized and optimized for better performance, cities are at risk of minimizing the human factor and the room for spontaneous and random events.
The aim of this project is to explore the possibilities of digital technologies in order to create urban interventions that can render the city a more playful, unexpected and heterogeneous place.
By appropriating dead media, Tweeting Antennas proposes a play of contrasts from visible to invisible communication processes, from high to low tech, from contemporary to dead or forgotten media and from virtual to physical environments.
More information about the project here.
The first version of the project was developed within the Master’s course in Communication Design and New Media at the Faculty of Fine Arts – University of Lisbon with the supervision of professor Luísa Ribas.
The second version was produced for PLUNC, New Media and Digital Art Festival and exhibited at Casa da Cerca – Contemporary Art Center in Almada.
The third version was made for xCoAX 2016 – Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X in Bergamo.
Collaboration with Francisco Salgado
