Art&&Code: Transmissions

Art&&Code: Transmissions — Workshops & Events

Art&&Code returns September 19–20 with Transmissions, a two-day exploration of radio as a creative medium through hands-on workshops, artist-led learning, and public conversation. This year’s edition focuses on Transmission Arts, an interdisciplinary field that uses radio frequency transmission and reception as artistic media, bringing together art, science, communication, and experimentation through the invisible electromagnetic spectrum that surrounds us.

All workshops and events will take place at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. The space is wheelchair accessible and there’s ample access to all gender restrooms. Please be in touch should you need accommodations to attend that have not been listed.

Space is limited for the Antenna Building Workshop, Radio Direction Finding, and Meshtastic Node & Sensor Building Workshop, and advance RSVP is required. The Open Studio and Closing Panel Discussion are free and open to all, no RSVP is required. All events are free, all food is free. If you want to pay please donate to the STUDIO to keep future events open and free to all.

All Weekend Long

Throughout the weekend, radio artist and former STUDIO guest lecturer Lorelei d’Andriole will be recording and producing a radio-work of the weekend’s activities. You may recognize Lorelei’s voice from the experimental radio program The Test of Lime with Jake Jacobs, which aired on KRUI 89.7 FM from 2019–2021.

Following Art&&Code: Transmissions, the completed radio work will be broadcast over the airwaves and shared online. Participants are invited to engage (or not) as Lorelei documents the conversations, sounds, and experiences that unfold throughout the weekend.

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Bios and headshots for all workshop leads and guest artists can be found at the bottom of this page.

Antenna Building Workshop
Saturday, September 19th
10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Led by Heidi Neilson

Build and learn to use a custom Yagi antenna with artist Heidi Neilson. Participants will construct their own directional antenna and learn to use Software Defined Radio (SDR) to access radio transmissions on a computer. Everyone will leave with a handmade antenna and an SDR to continue experimenting at home. Lunch will be provided.

RSVP to attend here.

Please note space is limited to 15 participants and we may not be able to accommodate all respondents. Your participation is not confirmed until you receive confirmation from us. Thank you for understanding.

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Radio Direction Finding
Saturday, September 19th
3:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Led by Tom Zajdel

Put your new antenna to work in this hands-on transmitter hunt. Learn the fundamentals of radio direction finding by tracking hidden radio transmitters in the field. Participants from the Antenna Building Workshop are especially encouraged to attend both sessions to immediately apply what they’ve built. Some extra antennas will be available to those that did not build their own.

Please note that this will take place outside and require physical navigation of the campus to search for a small object.

RSVP to attend here.

Please note space is limited to 15 participants and we may not be able to accommodate all respondents. Your participation is not confirmed until you receive confirmation from us. Thank you for understanding.

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Meshtastic Node & Sensor Building Workshop
Sunday, September 20th
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Led by Danielle McGuire and Grey Fox

Learn the fundamentals of Meshtastic by building your own wireless mesh networking node and telemetry sensor with local experts from Protomesh Collective and Hackers Guild Pittsburgh. All participants will receive a free Meshtastic node and telemetry sensor to take home. Lunch will be provided following the workshop.

RSVP to attend here.

Please note space is limited to 25 participants and we may not be able to accommodate all respondents. Your participation is not confirmed until you receive confirmation from us. Thank you for understanding.

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Open Studio: Transmission Arts
Sunday, September 20th
1:30 PM – 4:30 PM
Facilitated by workshop leaders and local radio community members

Continue experimenting, collaborating, and exploring in this open studio session. Test your antennas and mesh nodes, chase satellites, connect with local amateur radio clubs, and dive deeper into the tools and techniques introduced throughout the weekend. Open to all. Drop in for 15 mins or stay for the panel discussion!

No RSVP required.

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Closing Performance, Artist Talk & Panel Discussion
Sunday, September 20th
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Featuring: Anna Friz, Bianca Felix Biberaj, Heidi Neilson, Tom Zajdel, Danielle McGuire, Grey Fox, and Lorelei d’Andriole

Close the weekend with a live performance by artist Anna Friz, followed by a presentation from Bianca Felix Biberaj, Co-Director of Wave Farm, introducing the organization’s mission to support and advance Transmission Arts. The evening concludes with an open discussion and Q&A led by Lorelei d’Andriole, bringing together workshop leaders and guest artists to reflect on the weekend’s activities and explore emerging practices in radio, wireless networks, and experimental communication.

No RSVP required.

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Workshop Leads & Guest Artists

Heidi Neilson

Heidi Neilson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores connections between people on the ground and the atmospheric, orbital, and electromagnetic conditions and infrastructures that shape contemporary life. She works in multiple mediums including radio transmissions, sound, sculpture, electronics, prints, books, and video. She is currently co-operating Here GOES Radiotelescope, a sculptural receiving station for data transmissions from GOES-19, a NOAA/NASA weather satellite, and using the volumes of earth observation and space weather data collected by the station for a variety of projects.

From the New York Foundation for the Arts, Neilson is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Digital/Electronic Arts and a 2015 Fellow in Interdisciplinary Work. Neilson has been awarded Individual Artists grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (2024, 2022), a Media Assistance Fund for Artists Grant—New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm (2018), Art Matters Grant—Art Matters Foundation (2013), and Individual Artist Support—New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Queens Council on the Arts (2021, 2018, 2007). She was a visiting artist at the Center for Integrated Media at CalArts, and an artist resident at The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, the Urban Field Station at NYC’s Parks Department, SPACES, Wave Farm, Flux Factory, Klondike Institute of Art & Culture, Provisions Library, Elsewhere, Lower East Side Printshop, Center for Book Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, and Women’s Studio Workshop. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and her artist books and other works are held in over 100 collections, including those of the Brooklyn Museum, Cleveland Institute of Art, Columbia University, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and Yale University. Writing about her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Popular Mechanics, among others.

Neilson holds an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute and a BA in biology from Reed College. She teaches at Parsons School of Design and SUNY-FIT Fashion Institute of Technology, and lives and works in New York. Her ham radio call sign is KD2ESI.

Tom Zajdel

Tom Zajdel is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he studies what motivates students to engage with electronics and engineering. He teaches circuits, electronics, and engineering design, and has a technical background in fabricating bioelectronic interfaces for biosensing applications. An active amateur radio operator, he uses wireless technology as a hands-on tool for demonstrating engineering concepts.

Danielle McGuire

Danielle McGuire has over a decade’s worth of direct practical experience in the cybersecurity of bulk electric power systems such as the North American transmission grid. She is also the Founder of the Society of Hackers, which hosts monthly Chatham House Rules presentations and discussion on the latest in cybersecurity, privacy, and technology; and Co-Founder/First Scientist for the Protomesh Collective, a volunteer community effort to build low-cost Meshtastic nodes and provide free educational workshops on Meshtastic/LoRa communications. When she’s not doing that, she enjoys gardening, reading 20th-century history, and concocting various fermentations and braises. She prefers bash, Python, C, and RISC as her software toolkit, and ESP32/NRF52840+HT-RA62 as her hardware toolkit; she is currently learning about FPGA programming, quantum computing, and radio antenna design. She would love to meet people and chat; good icebreakers include “I have a great idea for a Society of Hackers talk” and “Can I have a free copy of your paper, ‘Grid-Computer Symbiosis: Towards the Industrial Internet of Things’?”

Grey Fox

Grey Fox is a Senior Security Engineer and Threat Intelligence Rustler working on global ICS products. As a U.S. military veteran with over 20 years experience, he cut his teeth in digital network intelligence, cyberspace warfare, and ground combat tactics. Grey Fox lugs baggage from numerous deployments ranging from offensive cyber operations planning and execution to military information support operations. He currently teaches Digital OPSEC, Expedient Software-defined Radio, and Tactical Communications to various onlookers, most recently at the Hackers Guild PGH. Grey Fox has been tolerated speaking at Def Con, various B-Sides, and other cons in addition to chairing panels on consumer data privacy for Federal research and accountability. When not seeking some free time, Grey Fox is threat modeling your AI applications and cos-playing as a Human Resistance fighter against Skynet.

Anna Friz

Anna Friz creates media art, sound art, radio and transmission art, working across platforms to present installations, broadcasts, films and performances. Her creative and scholarly works often reflect upon media ecologies, land and land use, infrastructures, time perception, radio and transmission art histories, and critical fictions. She specializes in self-reflexive radio for broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject, and medium of the work. Currently her focus is on a series of audiovisual works under the title We Build Ruins, which expressively consider mining and industrial corridors in the high altitude desert in northern Chile; Useful Radio, a live performance and installation created with Jeff Kolar based on Rick Prelinger’s radio listening archives; Revenant, a solo radio art work evolving into a future installation in collaboration with visual artist Lara Saab; and Water Line/Estuary Almanac, a 16-month composition based on the tidal patterns of the Fraser River in Vancouver created with Absolute Value of Noise for DeutschlandFunk Kultur and ORF Kunstradio, of the German and Austrian public radio.

Friz is currently Associate Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which she joined in 2015. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the department of Sound (2011–2013), funded by the Fonds de recherche Québec – société et culture (FRQ). She earned her Ph.D. in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture from York University, Tkaronto/Toronto (2011), and also holds a Masters in Media Studies from Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal (2003), and a BA in Women’s Studies from University of British Columbia (1996). Anna Friz has been affiliated with Wave Farm in Acra, New York, an artist-run transmission arts center, since 2002, and is a long time contributor and collaborator with ORF Kunstradio, Vienna, Austria.

Lorelei d’Andriole

d’Andriole earned her BFA in New Media from the University of Central Oklahoma (Magna Cum Laude) in 2018 and immediately went on to earn her MA and MFA with honors from the University of Iowa’s Intermedia program. She has shown work nationally at universities, galleries, festivals and DIY spaces including sUgAR Gallery (Arkansas), University of Nevada – Las Vegas (Nevada), and Public Space One’s Open Air Media Festival (Iowa). As a production director for KRUI 89.7 FM, d’Andriole hosted an experimental radio art program where she did weekly broadcasts for three years between 2018–2021. In 2022, d’Andriole completed a visual arts fellowship at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art in New York City, NY and currently works as an Assistant Professor in Electronic Art and Intermedia at Michigan State University. d’Andriole has been an active musician in the US punk scene since childhood and is currently playing in the Michigan bands Pet Me and Danger Cat. d’Andriole has worked collaboratively as part of the artist duos HOLO (with artist Kelly Clare) and Wetware Instruments (with artist Abhishek Narula). d’Andriole served as a board member for the International Alliance for Women in Music where she advocated for queer and trans* composers and musicians between 2022–2024. She has completed artist residencies at Public Space One in Iowa City, IA; A.P.E. in East Hampton, MA; Wave Farm in Acra, NY; and the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University in Alfred, NY.

Bianca Felix Biberaj

Photo credit: Adam T. Deen

Bianca Felix Biberaj is Co-Director of Wave Farm. She has worked with the organization since 2021. Biberaj has previously held research, curatorial, and teaching roles at Shaker Museum Mount Lebanon, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library. She received a Masters degree in Performance Studies from New York University and a Bachelors in Art History from Johns Hopkins University.

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Please direct questions to studio-info@andrew.cmu.edu.