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Radio Painting

Simon Ingram

The exhibition comprises of a series of new paintings made by a machine plugged into Ingram’s newly developed radio telescope. This device is built to receive radio signal that propagates in Earth’s upper atmosphere. The particular type of radio spectrum Ingram is interested in is known as very low frequency radio or VLF. The VLF radio spectrum is used by submarines to communicate over great distances back to base. It is known that changes in the amplitude of VLF signal corresponds to activity from the sun, such as solar flares. Radio Painting relates to rendering these changes across the VLF spectrum as painting.

While the method of the paintings included in the exhibition relates to electronic art and new media, they share an interest in rich materiality that characterizes modes of abstract painting not ordinarily associated with those practices. In his studio after dark, when the signal is strongest, Artist and machine work to materialise the immaterial, visualise the invisible and dissolve boundaries between analogue and digital methods.