I accidently stumbled across an interesting part 15 story the other night. There’s this guy named Micheal Betancourt who is credited theorist and also apparently well known in art circles. Interestinly enough had formulated something called the “Free Art Project” which is creditted as being the forunner of the Creative Commons project.
Anyway, back in 2005 he made a film called “Telemetry” which is an abstract which utilized the actual telemetry of the Cassini space probe, as it sent back data from its journey to Saturn, and to those various sounds was imposed colorful images kind of synced to the sounds.
Well about a year later, backed by a grant from National Endowment of the Arts, he created an “art installation” and named it “Transmission/Reception” by projecting the film silently on a large screen while broadcasting the audio via part 15 FM to surrounding areas.. He discussed this briefly in his book titled “Structuring Time”.
Anyway, I thought the whole thing interesting and after a day or two of quick research I wrote about it a legth on my blog if anyone is curious about the whole story (or at least what I was able to gather). http://part15lab.blogspot.com/2017/01/receptiontransmission-event.html
An update on this story; I
An update on this story; I just received an email from Micheal Betancourt – I had emailed him last night, wasn’t sure I would receive a reply.. If you had read my blog post you would see that I had wondered why he had so emphasized part 15 for an art exibit, and that I had also considered the reported 3 block range to be questionable, though I did not mention it in my email.
Well, I received the following email from him this morning:
Thanks for sending this! Your coverage is pretty good, and it’s always nice to see a write up of something I’ve done 🙂
There’s two very minor things. My emphasis on Part 15 rules needed to be there because of the grant. While the broadcasting was really a major part of the exhibition, it was also something that could make problems for it getting the supporting money, so I included the explanation. (The three block range was the manufacturer’s claim for the unit.) The other minor point is about the antenna–receivers with larger antennas could pick it up a few blocks away if they had a clear line of sight, but that generally wasn’t the case; most cars needed to be parked right at the event to hear it.
The UNO installation attracted a lot more attention, but also had a much shorter range, extending only into the lobby and right outside the gallery door, but not through the heavy concrete walls, maybe 35 feet at most. I don’t think the college students in Iowa really cared much, but the UNO students were quite engaged with it!
Your write-up was a nice way to start the new year!
Michael
Great write-up! I like seeing
Great write-up! I like seeing articles from members in other places.
There have been a few art projects using low power radio as part of their installations, and things like “silent discos” that I’ve heard about, but the idea of taking something that started out as radio, and continuing its radio journey is pretty clever.