SEND/RECEIVE
Mixed Media, 2025
“Send/Receive” is an interactive sculpture exploring how contemporary art can transform urban infrastructure into participatory cultural space. The structure features a 0.2 miles radio transmitter (in compliance with FCC 15 regulations) that invites the public to broadcast their stories, music, etc. Listeners can tune in on their car radio or any radio within broadcast distance. The sculpture/station offers several points of connections- one for a standing person, one for kids and people in wheelchairs.
The decision to use short-range radio rather than digital broadcasting platforms speaks to the installation’s philosophical underpinnings. Radio waves travel–although distorted–infinite distances, penetrating barriers. The earthly ephemeral nature of the transmissions – unrecorded and broadcast into the air – introduces a temporality that challenges conventional archival or current digital habits. Unless the users decide to independently document their broadcast, the stories exist only in their moment of telling and receiving, creating a living oral tradition that resists digital hoarding.
If not used for programming and individual broadcasts, the station broadcasts the unfiltered sonic landscape and sends within a 0.2-mile radius a three-dimensional sphere of sound: the patterns of traffic starting and stopping, bass lines bleeding from car windows. The scrape of footsteps and fragments of passing conversation that dissolve into unintelligible murmur. Birds. Sirens. Rain on pavement. Languages layering over languages. What you hear when you tune in is happening right now, in this moment, within blocks of where you are.
The sculpture is made of fiberglass and steel, with a concrete and reinforced steel foundation, and stands 10”-4 1/2” tall. Constructed as a series of fiberglass parts bolted to a steel square tube, each sculpture has (2) 24” diameter fiberglass pods which house the radio components, Both can be used at the same time for a duo-type transmission. The interface includes a power on button, which is attached to a timer, and which can be re-powered on for more time. It also includes a microphone behind a louvered screen, an input for a smart phone or computer, and an input for a headphone to monitor the broadcast. Instructions on how to use the transmitter are in English and Spanish. Inside the pods are the equipment, including a battery that stores the solar power. Electricity never exceeds 12V. Above the transmission pods is a 48” diameter fiberglass roof, which shields the pods and users, on the underside provides additional signage with information on how to learn more about the sites on the underside, and on top holds the solar panel that powers the station.
Artist: Sylke Rene Meyer
Artistic collaborator and architecture: Kimberli I Meyer
Fabrication: Scott Zevina and Corbin Rodriguez
Photography: Scott Alario
Graphic Design: Ingrid Bromberg Kennedy
Commissioned by the City of Providence, RI. and Rhode Island Latino Arts