Toward a Minor Tech:Mateus

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Low Frequency Zones

Name	Frequency range	Wave length	Signals
Super low frequencies	Below 3 Hz	More than 100000 km	Geomagnetic pulsations
Ultra low frequencies	3-30 Hz	100000-10000 km	Brain electrical activity
[…]
Very low frequencies	3-30 kHz	100-10 km	Natural radio signals
[…]
Low frequencies	30-300 kHz	10-1 km	Long wave broadcast
[…]
Ultra high frequencies	2.5 gHz	12.5 cm	2.5 gHz Wifi
	5 gHz	6 cm	5 gHz Wifi
	300 gHz - 430 tHz	1 mm - 700 nm	Infrared

Table showing partial range of electromagnetic frequencies (data mostly from Romero, 2010)

In this essay, I will explore activities at different scales of electromagnetic frequencies and consider how they might be perceived as part of experimental anti-capitalist forms of computation. This is contrasted with the figure of the Hobbyist which overlaps these practices.

The network society is built around an infrastructure of physical nodes that are a familiar part of the environments we live in. The connections between these often remain slightly more hidden, glimpsed as cables disappearing underground, or as things that simply occur outside the bounds of visible light. The transmission of data between these nodes takes place at many points through different zones of the electromagnetic spectrum. It moves stretched and condensed, at wavelengths ranging from approximately 0.00075mm to 125mm.

These moments of transmission are shared excursions – light pulsing through the bandwidth commons of undersea cables, and point to point hopping through CDNs, from street-side cabinets, to domestic routers. Command line tools such as Traceroute can reveal a surface approximation of the network topology through data requests – tracing the hops between networks and the timings between them whilst still obscuring deeper layers of hops.

The paths this data takes follow the paths laid by earlier modes of capitalist extraction, continuing these processes. With this in mind, I'd like to turn to the slow data packets, the physically shipped components of what could be called, Hobbyist computation. How does a creative practice that seeks to explore low-power computation resolve the contradictions inherent in its entanglement with global supply chains and systems of infrastructure?

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Through their specificity and component breakdown the hobbyist may often reach further into these webs of supply than most consumer practices are required to i.e. through purchasing from platforms such as Alibaba or directly with component manufacturers. Invoking the hobbyist we must also contest with its connotations of a gendered freedom, regular waged work and disposable income. The hobbyist as consumer and nominal endpoint of commodities also carries a precariousness:

"Right now we feel the right thing to do is to prioritise commercial and industrial customers – the people who need Raspberry Pis to run their businesses – we’re acutely aware that people’s livelihoods are at stake." -Raspberry Pi

In the case of the Raspberry Pi (whose mission statement includes “Democratising technology – providing access to tools”) the hobbyist consumers are cut off from the supply, until the demands of the industrial orders are met. The motivations of the hobbyist can not be assumed and hold to no singular political vision. Partly for this reason the hobbyist practices are always at risk of becoming productive to the economies that support them.

For our purposes though, the hobbyist does offer a perspective from which to scope different producers and systems and to access the fringes of the systems and devices that support infrastructure. How do experimental, low-tech practices exist here? How does an experimental, de-colonial practice of computation imagine different methods of engagement with these marketplaces and supply chains?

Another facet of the hobbyist is the accumulation, recycling and restoration of old components. This begins to align with the practices of salvage and repair found in discussions of permacomputing and specific projects such as Collapse OS where a kind of 'scavenger electronics' is proposed.

In thinking about how to occupy these spaces and the tension between salvageable computation and manufactured components I have been building very low frequency radio antennas. These are simple in construction; a coil of wire connected to a headphone jack, and operated through amplification via a PCM recorder. Radio, generally is another field with strong associations to hobby values. [see also higher frequency 'Foxhole Radio' experiments performed by groups such Shortwave Collective]

VLF Antenna (Approx 0.8m2, wood, copper wire, audio jack)

VLF Antenna (Approx 0.8m2, wood, copper wire, audio jack)

Very low frequency radio invites the operator to listen, to perceive the electromagnetic phenomenon that exist, overlapping our human made transmissions, and seldom encountered, unless as error. So-called Statics are signals received from lightning strikes. Lighting strikes the earth up to 100 times per second. When listening with an antenna, the presence of statics can be used to determine that the antenna is functioning correctly as, "after the first few kilometres, the lightning radio signal propagates by ground wave, following the Earth's curvature for thousands of kilometres." Given the distances the signal can travel, these Statics should always be present. It sounds like the inviting crackling of a warm fire on a dark night.

Other phenomenon can also be recorded, such as the effects of solar flares. This suggests an unexpected and immediate transgression of scale. It suggests a practice of time, a durational listening - that changes, with the time of day, the weather and the season, each producing different trends or conditions.

Such antennas can also reconfigure immediate human spaces. Wifi packets become audible pops, vehicle engines whine, and occasionally broadcast radio of voices and music might be picked up too. Listening to the antenna in a public venue revealed the broadcast of the hearing-loop assistive listening device – allowing me to listen to one room from an entirely different one, through which the field of broadcast coursed like a meandering river. It is a practice that is always live and affective with the immediate zone, and electromagnetic waves passing through.

This practice also opens up space to imagine what kind of listening might be possible in the future, under different circumstances. However, the conditions of this listening are still contingent on the availability of power and manufactured components – tied to hobbyist supply chains. How do anti-capitalist practices transmit across these different frequencies?