The exhibition Transmission/Frequency: Tesla and His Legacy was presented at the IDEA Space in Colorado Springs in Fall of 2014 in collaboration with the Colorado College Innovation Institute and featured contemporary artists whose works reflect — deliberately or not — Tesla’s maverick spirit and enduring legacy. Featured projects engage some of Tesla’s ideas, such as free-floating electrical current, self-sustaining systems/movements, electrical and fluorescent light, and magnetic fields. The exhibition included images and reproductions of Tesla’s inventions and excerpts from his journals, particularly those written during his time in Colorado Springs.
My installation Incoherence is based on Schumann Resonances – global electromagnetic resonances that are excited by lightning discharges in the cavity formed by the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere. This phenomenon is related to Tesla’s explorations of wireless power generation and reception in Colorado Springs. Using custom software based on calculations of spherical harmonics, in combination with the work of composer David First and geophysicist Davis Sentman, I was able to transcode electromagnetic activity into audible and visible forms, revealing emergent layers of pattern. For me the power of the idea of Tesla, rather than the power of Tesla’s ideas is the most interesting and compelling. In its theoretical foundation, the installation comments upon Tesla’s scientific research; its ethereal presentation evokes the various pseudoscientific theories that have arisen concerning both Tesla and the Schumann Resonance phenomenon.
