All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (Radia Version) is a transmission work that is an extension of the work done for Maximilian Goldfarb’s Deep Cycle (2010). The piece is composed of a series of maps that trace a path through all Radia Network stations in Europe. The maps are then encoded to sound through a protocol for transmission of images over radio known as slow-scan television, or SSTV (in this case, Robot 72s Color). The piece re-interprets the solid as air through the processes of encoding, transmitting, receiving and decoding the map. Through this process, the physical and imagined boundaries depicted on the map become distorted through their interaction with the actual space they intend to represent.
Distortion in image due to sstv encoding/transmission/reception/decoding over a broadband link. Terrestrial radio broadcast/reception can introduce more and varied distortions of the original information.
Brett is a Chicago-based artist working at the intersection of objects, sounds and spaces. He received his Masters of Fine Arts in Studio from the Department of Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his Bachelor in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology, teaching courses in architecture, computer-aided design and manufacturing, do-it-yourself broadcasting and acoustics. Brett is also a free103point9.org transmission artist and a 2009-2010 airtime fellow.
