PARSONS SCHOOL OF
DESIGN PRESENTS:

When Satellites Murmur

‘When Satellites Murmur’ is the result of sonic experimentation between satellites, theremins, birds, and, (least importantly) humans. The project translates and modulates real-time signals between satellites and theremins, positioning the antenna not as a passive receiver but as an active listener and instrument. It explores the tension between the poetics of nonhuman listening and the politics of communication technology. The ephemerality of our cosmic soundscape is a lesson in deep listening, a chance to liberate technologies like radio and satellites from their military origins, and to repurpose them to celebrate the wonders of the nonhuman world. What sonic communication can be imagined between satellites, birds, and humans - one of harmony or interference?

Eliot Lambert

Artist and Creative Technologist
Eliot Lambert is a London born NYC based artist and creative technologist who works at the intersection of video art, interactive media, and sound design. Her nonlinear storytelling responds to the cacophony of the information age. She is committed to criticizing bias and hegemony in tech, with a background in feminist organizing and writing. She is currently learning the theremin!
Thesis Faculty
Sam LavigneEthan Silverman
SELF-PORTRAIT IN CUBIC SDR
SELF-PORTRAIT IN CUBIC SDR

To explore my project further visit its website:

https://eliotklambert.github.io/whensatellitesmurmur/

ME AND MY ANTENNA


PLAYING THE THEREMIN WITH AN ANTENNA ON MY ROOF

ELECTRONIC MURMURATION
SELF PORTRAIT PLAYING THEREMIN
BIRD SPECTROGRAM

This work has informed my artistic practice to be more centered around sound design, electronic composition, cybernetics, and the nonhuman. I would like to develop my own deep listening practice, as inspired by Pauline Oliveros and other wise souls. Deep listening is more than just an aural act, but a way to appreciate that all things are delicately interconnected.

It feels like I’ve only just scratched the surface, and that there is so much potential to develop this project for years to come. Its exploration of the tension between the human and nonhuman, the biological and technological, is one that will shift seismically, becoming even more complex and entangled.

I owe it all to the birds that sing like chainsaws, the satellites that swarm like starlings, the wings that flap like static, the signals that sound like the dawn chorus, the drone that mimics the sparrow, the starlings that trip the telephone wires, and so on and so forth…

When starlings murmur

their bodies cascade in perfect formation

with the preciseness of an algorithm yet the

unpredictability of an avalanche.

When satellites murmur

their bodies cascade in perfect formation

with the preciseness of an algorithm yet the 

unpredictability of an avalanche.

Mobile frequencies disrupt the dawn chorus

murmurations trip telephone wires

pet birds sing (Amazon’s) ‘Alexa’

wild birds sing chainsaws

I crave electromagnetic waves undulating through me

to hear the dawn chorus of 

cyborg swarms

energy transmission more potent than waxy ears can receive

What’s an ear to an antenna?

Every night I make my pilgrimage to the sky

I stick out my (Amazon) antenna and frequencies cascade like an avalanche

I ascend into megahertz 

and pray that you will sing back to me

with the cadence of birdsong

but all I get is a beeeeeep and some shshshshshshsh sounds

I will never learn your language.