Shona Neary / Sketchy Shona
Entropic Antennas is a proposed installation exploring how electromagnetic radiation, material change and somatic experience occupy the same spaces.
Electromagnetic Radiation: The Physical Weight of Data
Wireless data is not weightless. Wi-Fi beacons, radio waves and electrical fields are physical electromagnetic activity moving through space and interacting with materials. Contemporary digital culture can treat connectivity as clean and immortal, hiding the mineral extraction, electrical grids and heat required to keep signals alive.
My question is how an artwork might make those conditions felt without collecting private communication. This is an infrastructure question, not a claim that ordinary exposure harms the body.
Thermodynamic Entropy: Rot as Material Reinvention
Entropy is a major part of what inspires me. I am interested in what changes, what breaks down and what remains. In this work, entropy is not a synonym for rot.
For Entropic Antennas, I propose testing SCOBY and mycelium alongside gypsum and reclaimed cellulose. I have not cultivated or measured these combinations. Whether moisture or biological activity changes electrical conductivity, shielding or acoustic response is an open research question, not a result I already have.
Somatic Nervous Systems: Where Signals Meet Flesh
Our bodies have electrical activity and exist among ambient electromagnetic fields and ongoing material change. That does not mean every signal changes the nervous system. Starting from the somatic, through figurative work, Human Cocoon and ink on skin, keeps my studio research connected to what a body feels before language or code steps in.
In Half Life, I brought physics and spirituality together in a self-portrait. These earlier works are not sensor studies. They are part of the artistic history I bring to questions about bodies, matter and the systems moving through a room.
How These Three Forces Could Meet in the Studio
In Entropic Antennas, I want to explore how these layers might share one physical installation:
The signal: I am considering passive copper coils, VLF receivers and non-content RF detectors to register ambient wireless activity and electrical fields. The instruments, permissions and limits still need to be determined.
The decay: I want to test living cultures and porous cellulose-plaster forms over time. Whether changes in moisture alter resistance, shielding or acoustic response remains unknown.
The somatic output: Contact piezo microphones and open-source microcontrollers are possible ways to translate measured changes into spatial sound. This system is proposed, not built.
A proposal that has to change as I learn
I do not yet know the final form, sound or measurement approach. The materials, sensor methods and proposed ninety-day decay process all need testing.
The work will depend on what the research can actually show. I want to hear the difference between a material changing, an instrument responding and an artistic decision I make.
Images from this journal record
Radiation, Rot, and Nervous Systems: Why Data, Decay, and Bodies Are One System / human cocoon installation Artwork: Sketchy Shona (Shona Neary).
Radiation, Rot, and Nervous Systems: Why Data, Decay, and Bodies Are One System / human cocoon concept