Transmission ring explores overlooked moments in city environments, reclaiming potentially missed signals within our ‘noise’-filled environments. Acknowledging and embracing the unique interactions that take place between objects/people, movement/vision and sound/vibration, this film occurs between the signals, objects, bodies and territories that are located amongst city spheres. It considers the digital rubble manifest in material goods and the chaotic hidden behind controlled appearances.

Viscerally connecting us to a cityscape we are perhaps unaware of, the images of this film travel through and amongst flesh, mechanics, communicative signals and ideals of beauty. Whilst the sounds, sourced from electronic, electro-optical & electromechanical devices within downtown Vancouver, such as radio towers, power stations, telegraph wires, neon lights, microwaves and mobile phones, reference the electromagnetic spectra of our cities. Transmission ring brings our attention to the technological and communication networks of our cities, and consequently the invisible territories that lie beyond the boundaries of both our bodies and the physical world.

Transmission ring is part of an ongoing audiovisual collaboration between two Australian artists based abroad. London based artist Katrina Stamatopoulos and Vancouver based artist Alexandra Spence navigate notions of geographical identity coinciding with a globalized existence. It is part of an ongoing project that explores the delicately complicated link between sound and the moving image.

Alexandra Spence and Katrina Stamatopoulos, Transmission Ring, 2015, digital video, audio, 6:44 min