Adriana Knouf
Manipulating the Signal
Eleonore Radio Residency
Mon, 4. Sept - Sat., 11. Sept 2021

Hertzian space is the realm of electromagnetic signals, of the transduction of phenomena into waves that can cross the room or the universe. A certain subset of this space, the shortwave region, allows for transmission from one side of the planet to the other, bouncing waves off of an ionosphere that is itself modulated by the activity of the sun. The legal right to transmit within this region is governed by complicated regulations, allowing those with the “proper” licenses to be able to have access to this space. Even more constraining, tacit rules of radio amateurs constrict transmissions to those that are most “efficient”, forcing the aesthetics of transmission to the background. During the residency I will be exploring new kinds of transmissions, modifications to existing modes of encoding, that will foreground the sonic possibilities of transmission in the shortwave spectrum, furthering the artistic exploration of the spectrum as medium.

Adriana Knouf is already working one week before STWST48 on the STWST residency ship Eleonore. The Eleonore is provided by STWST for artists and critical producers. The ship is moored in the Traun-Danube estuary in Linz.




Adriana Knouf, PhD (US) works as an artist, writer, and xenologist. She engages with topics such as wet media, space art, satellites, radio transmission, non-human encounters, drone flight, queer and trans futurities, machine learning, the voice, and papermaking. She is the Founding Facilitator of the tranxxenolab, a nomadic artistic research laboratory that promotes entanglements among entities trans and xeno. Adriana regularly presents her artistic research around the world and beyond, including a work that has flown aboard the International Space Station. https://zeitkunst.org