Darsha Hewitt in Residence

Description:

While in residence, Darsha Hewitt worked with experimental handmade electronics to develop  DAEMON DETECTION—an environmentally responsive, site-specific sound installation for Western Front.

By installing sensing antennae throughout the building, Hewitt was able to detect changes in the surrounding electromagnetic fields. These shifts created subtle yet audible emissions through transmitter radios that had specific lo-fi/low-tech sounds that included white noise, frequency distortions, and voices captured from broadcasts.

Hewitt gave an artist talk titled Instrumental Transcommunication: Listening Through Your Electronics (Hearing the Dead) in which she presented her research on “instrumental transcommunication”—a term used to describe communication between spirits and the living through any electronic device that may solicit audible and visual manifestations, and other anomalies.

To conclude her residency, Hewitt held a workshop titled Ethereal Computing: Homemade Sensing Devices for Invisible Matter that fostered electronic experimentation through introducing basic antenna and radio theory and techniques. Participants tapped into the ethereal realm of the invisible information of our atmosphere by tinkering with radios, scrapped domestic electronics, and handmade audio generating devices.