VLF project came about after I met with Marek Styczyński -

a woodsman and expert in the protection of mountainous terrain. He told me about his experiments.

Together with a group of friends Marek bore into a tree, somewhere in wild mountainous terrain. He inserted a microphone, plugged it into an amplifier and put on a set of headphones, hoping to hear the sound of beetles or leaves. To his surprise he heard a song by Madonna. He discovered the reason for this on the Internet, coming across an article about US army research led by General Squire in the 1920’s. General George Owen Squire worked on developing a natural and wireless network. A tree acted as his antenna, which due to its spectacular properties was able to capture waves of a very low frequency (VLF). As a result of very low suppression and large diffraction these waves are able to travel and cover very large distances.

The range covered by waves of a low frequency is high and both during day and night reaches several thousand kilometers. Thanks to them trees capture radio waves. Islands are also able to act as large antennas. Specialists in the field as well as amateurs interested in the subject can be found on the Natural Radio Lab website.

This piece is inspired by this true story, which appears to be untrue. Here fiction mixes with reality.

In the video Maurycy Gomulicki’s sculpture entitled Melancholia appears. The piece was inspired by Albrecht Durer’s print.

The sculpture acts as a hidden transmitter, which also brings to mind Kubrick’s  monolith from Space Odyssey.