Anyone who comes across the woodpeckers on the sound trail hike might whip out their mobile phone, make a film of the tapping robot woodpecker and send it to their favourite virtual social environment. And lo and behold: the more people do exactly that, the more wildly the woodpeckers tap. But why? The sound of the woodpeckers is a sonification of the different types of electrosmog that prevail in this section of the sound trail.
The sound of electromagnetic smog
This work by the artist Marco Barotti is complex: first, electromagnetic waves in the immediate vicinity are received and converted into audio samples. Then, only the frequencies audible to the human ear are calculated. Only low frequencies in the range of 0 to 20 hertz remain – inaudible to humans, but visible! Small loudspeakers make this frequency range visible because their membrane moves even when we hear nothing. The head of a woodpecker consists of such a small loudspeaker. A small ‘beak’ is mounted on it. When the small loudspeaker is stimulated by the converted and filtered electromagnetic frequencies, the ‘beak’ moves back and forth and in turn strikes the tuned xylophone bar.
"The woodpecker and its way of communicating is a metaphor for me to point out the effects of human wireless communication."
The Woodpeckers create their own ever changing, live soundscape, which, due to modern communication technologies, always resonates in the natural environment. The resulting acoustic composition is subject to constant transformation depending on the existing electrosmog.
A different theme every year
Every year, Marco Barotti picks a theme that he wants to explore through his art. In 2023, it was electrosmog, which is created by ubiquitous wireless technology. For each theme, Barotti selects a creature from the living ecosystem that becomes a metaphor for his theme. The basic idea is to create a ‘tech ecosystem’ that plays with similarities to animals and plants. Woodpeckers communicate and mark their territory with their tapping – for Barotti, this is what people do with mobile phones or the use of GPS and navigation apps.
Behind every movement there is sound
What all of Barotti's diverse works of art have in common is that they are based on the translation of data into audio frequencies. These are emitted from loudspeakers, which then generate movements using push and pull. This means that sound is also the basis of his parallel universe, the ‘tech ecosystem’.
About the artist
Marco Barotti completed his music studies at the Siena Jazz Academy in Italy between 1999 and 2003. Since 2005 the artist has been living and working in Berlin. Since 2015, his artworks have been shown in over 50 international exhibitions and have been celebrated time and again. For his works ‘Clams’, ‘Swans’ and ‘Sound Of Light’, Barotti was honoured with the Delux Color Award (2015), the Tesla Award (2018) and the NTU Global Digital Art Prize (2019).
marcobarotti.com ↗
