Reclaim the Spectrum

Reclaim the Spectrum, an exhibition at Zemos98 Audiovisual Festival (March 14–18 in Seville), features an array of artists who map and make visible the electromagnetic spectrum we use for today's wireless devices, from radios to cellphones to wifi networks. The show features artists like Anib Jain (above), who, upon discovering that neighbors were poaching her wireless internet connection, set up a yellow chair on the sidewalk to create a free, communal, and in-person experiment with connectivity. Michelle Teran's video installation documents a walk through the city with a portable frequency scanner, intercepting and "microcasting" the footage she captures from wireless video cameras in the area. From moving images recorded at ATMs and bank lobbies, to security cameras in a baby's nursery, her project seems to suggest that privacy is a thing of the past.

The Wayback Machine: Several years ago, I interviewed collage filmmaker Craig Baldwin, the artist who used kinescopes and found footage to create Spectres of the Spectrum (1999), a film that raised prescient issues about the use and ownership of the airwaves. Read the interview at Version.