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Signal station Archive  


Type:

Installation Built in:

Eindhoven, The Netherlands Date of completion:

August, 2025

The station - a symbol of obbsessivity over monitoring an uncertain future, that is being communicated in encrypted radio wave frequencies. 




The station - a symbol of obbsessivity over monitoring an uncertain future, that is being communicated in encrypted radio wave frequencies. The project had two main anchor points: the theory of technofossils and motivation of visualising encrypted radio wave propagation.

Project is motivated by fear of the on-going war in the Easter Europe. As the designer is a national of one of the countries near the border of Russia, the fear and uncertainty over a war breaking out and getting called home to fight suddenly, is increasing day by day.The communication about the war in the public media is often times tailored to fit a narrative of one side or the other. Only thing, one can be sure is the intensity of activity - in this case, communication activity.

Thus, the methodology is positioned around the principle of recording and only monitoring activity over encoded radio frequencies, that way, determening whether to raise an alarm of intensified communication or not.

Model of the physical installation
Physical installation


Research

Througout the process, it became apparent, that without proper, laboratory level decoding or monitoring equipment, it would be impossible to extract legitimate data, moreover, it would be straight up illegal.Yet, one thing we can extract, by purely outputting the recorded sound is the activity of communications on
these frequencies over a set period of time.


Compilation of tools of capturing radio waves and troposcatter networks around europe
Excerpt from research about the “Hoek van holland” troposcatter research
Model of the Hoek van Holland Troposcatter 

Technicals
For recording and detecting radio waves, there was a combination of open source WEBSDR platform and self developed and project  tailored radio wave analysis software 
The project's interface actively monitored 10 seperate radio frequencies, then picked the one, with most activity. afterwards, forwarded the incoming signal and started printing the recording.
Diagram of chain of command, from radio wave recording to printing.



Printing
Througout the process, it became apparent, that without proper, laboratory level decoding or monitoring equipment, it would be impossible to extract legitimate data, moreover, it would be straight up illegal.Yet, one thing we can extract, by purely outputting the recorded sound is the activity of communications on
these frequencies over a set period of time.





Video recording's of the incoming radio waves being printed.
Guidelines and legend of how to read the printed recording
An excerpt from the archive of recordings. Full archive is available here.











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