Series 7 - 1.10.24 Waning Crescent ☽ Report on the Potential of A-Library as a Resource for Learning In The Field and Foray into Spectrum Sovereignty

1700hrs AEST / or Your timezone here. To attend Register on a low-traffic announcement list. Details on how to attend will be communicated via email shortly before.

For Series 7, we are graced with Dr. Heather Contant, an artist and historian who works with sound, radio, and visual media to explore structural coupling amongst human and more-than-human beings from the past and present.

Heather will briefly respond to previous fireside chats by introducing A-Library, a small portable e-library device created by Benjamin Forster, currently housed at Frontyard Projects.

Heather will discuss how A-Library ~could~~ be used in remote locations, with small amounts of self-generated power, and in ways that allow us to distribute resources for learning in new places. She’ll also share recent experiments demonstrating A-Library’s functionality in the field.

Since A-Library is a wireless device utilising the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band of the electromagnetic spectrum, Heather will reflect on and question the implications of its use on stolen lands and talks from her perspective as a white settler. She hopes for these questions and reflections to provide a very brief introduction to the spectrum sovereignty movement and to get people thinking about the potential applications of wireless technologies in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples.

Australian Radiofrequency Spectrum Allocations Chart can be found at BarrattCommunications

Heather Contant uses an array of technologies and procedural techniques to produce online, installation-based, and live works and is currently completing a book project entitled, “Wireless Solidarity: A History of Generative Collectivism in Media Arts.” Her work has been presented at Ocean Space, Casula Powerhouse, Monster Mouse Studios, Radio Papesse, Eyebeam, and The Wave Farm among other places. Her writings are published in the Radio Journal, Journal of Sonic Studies, Leonardo Music Journal, Soundscape, and elsewhere. She has taught at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, as well as at Pratt, The New School, Downtown Community Television, and the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City. As an audio engineer, she has worked for New York Public Radio, the Pacifica Network, the n+1 podcast, Art in General, 2SER, and The Newsagency. Contant is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Humanities and Social Change International Foundation at Università Ca' Foscari in Venice. She is also a member of the Sydney City Humanoid Electronic Modular Ensemble (SCHEME) and Sub_mergences.