'When Satellites Murmur' MFA Thesis Project (2025)
is an ode to murmuration. The result of sonic experimentation between satellites, starlings, theremins, and (least importantly) humans. Murmuration as the sound made by thousands of starlings flapping their wings in unison, but more widely defined as the utterance of a low and continuous sound. Murmuration represents the ephemeral and at times incomprehensible channels of nonhuman vocalization. The work translates and modulates real-time and prerecorded signals between satellites and theremins, positioning their antennas not as passive receivers but as active listeners and instruments.
This is the project's website including the research, process, and final documentation, that I coded using javascript, CSS, and HTML. Have a browse or click this link to open the website in a new tab.
This is my Design and Technology MFA thesis project from Parsons School of Design. I was exploring posthumanism and electronic composition. I studied sound ecologies at the Institute for Postnatural Studies, learnt how to pick up satellite signals from Open Weather's DIY Satellite Ground Station Toolkit, and learnt the theremin through a NYC Theremin Society workshop.
The film below is an experimental short about my attempt to pick up a NOAA satellite signal from my NYC rooftop, to enter an eerie and ephemeral portal of nonhuman communication. The outcome is a sonic network of satellite signal beeps, starling murmurations, shortwave radio waves, and theremin oscillations.
The film draws parallels between the avian and technological networks that inhabit our skies - starlings murmur like TV static whilst satellites orbit like swarms. The soundscape is mediated by my process of picking up and modulating real-time and prerecorded signals, transforming antennas from passive receivers into instruments that play the ephemeral sounds of our aerial networks.
The sound for this film was made using CubicSDR, MaxMSP, and a Moog Theremin.
Murmuration footage taken from Adobe Stock.
For the Parsons Design and Technology Thesis Show, I set up an audiovisual installation using two defunct satellite dishes, two projectors, a theremin as a midi controller, a dipole antenna connected to CubicSDR for live shortwave radio and Max MSP for audio modulation. The video below shows the setup.
As part of the setup, using MaxMSP I created a three channel 'radio' that switched between birdsong recordings, live NYPD feed (via Cubic SDR using Radio Reference open source data), and satellite beeps (pre-recorded on CubicSDR using an RTL-2 dongle and antenna). The radio is theremin-controlled so the amplitude and pitch/frequency are controlled by your left and right hands over the two antennas. This 'radio' is very much a prototype and I would like to develop it to be more live-reactive and have more senstitive parameters, particularly with the NYPD radio which often came out as muffled or static.
