Biological_data_transmission (2023)
Myles Merckel (UK/NL)
Is the wind that blows daily just the movement of air, or does invisible life reside in the currents that traverse our earth? Biological_data_transmission is a long-term research project concerned with creating systems for identifying and amplifying airborne organic particulates and their global movements within the earth's complex weather systems. For his research the artist Myles Merckel created a series of instruments, including the OPM_1. It is a sensing instrument that sonifies and archives the invisible movement of particles within the atmosphere.
A singular electrical pulse is created when a UV laser transmitter/receiver registers a particle. This electrical pulse is then amplified by a transformer across a spark gap which embeds the pulse permanently onto electromagnetic tape. The pulse is then transduced into acoustical energy by a tape player. This way one can hear and observe the amount of life that is floating around as airborne matter.
About the artist
Myles Merckel is an interdisciplinary artist currently working and studying in The Hague, The Netherlands. Working from a creative research practice, projects connect and intersect fields within the natural sciences such as ecology, biology and geology. His research is concerned with the observation, amplification and archival of non-visible environmental processes, focusing on building instruments that present alternative ways of interfacing with the natural world.
