This paper is an archaeological excavation of this thing we call the radio spectrum, it’s a history of how the radio spectrum came to be discovered, articulated, and ultimately invented as an apparatus of power. This is an argument against treating the radio spectrum as a thing, a pregiven, natural, material object.

The radio spectrum describes a range of electromagnetic waves with frequencies between 3 khz and 1000 GHz. The word ‘spectrum’ specifically suggests a continuum of waves, ordered in some kind of logical progression – a sequential scale of frequencies. When the phrase radio spectrum is used however, it usually doesn’t refer simply to this ordered sequence of frequencies and related wavelengths, it signifies a system of organisation, a means by which bands of frequencies are set aside for different uses, a way of separating radio technologies from each other, and ultimately a way of controlling their use. In this sense the radio spectrum is a way of describing a natural attribute of electromagnetic waves, which enables the control of radio technologies and of the people who use them. The concept of radio spectrum is fundamentally a human invention, a way of thinking about an aspect of the natural world that enables natural forces to be organised and controlled.

Technology historian and economist Hugh GJ Aitken proposed a research project in 1994 to explore the human history of the radio spectrum, the

story of how we learned to think about the physical world in a new way by inventing the concept of the electromagnetic spectrum. And, having invented that idea, how we used it to explore areas of the spectrum not previously known, and how we made those spectral domains serve human ends (Antenna: The Newsletter of the Mercurian Society for the history of Technology, 1994: 8).

My phd thesis research addressed part of this project, arguing that the human history of radio spectrum is a history of differing discursive representations of a sequence of wavelengths.

This paper describes three different understandings of the way the radio spectrum has come to be known, and effectively three different kinds of radio spectrum.

Discovery (as of a continent)

Aitken referred to the radio spectrum as having been invented as a way of making sense and use of an aspect of the natural world, but he also referred to it as having been discovered - a proposal he set out through in an elaborate metaphor of exploration in his 1976 book Syntony and Spark. In this Aitken relates Heinrich Hertz’s generation of electromagnetic waves in 1888 to the “discovery of a new continent” (1976: 32). He suggests that while the electromagnetic spectrum is not a territory in the manner of a physical continent, it was at the time of its discovery a site of new, though invisible, resources, the value of which was not yet known. Aitken extends the continent analogy to describe the process of exploration that produced an understanding of the physical expanse and continuity of the radio spectrum. To frame his proposal for the history of human understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum, for example, Aitken asks of the initial transmissions of electromagnetic waves, “When and by whom were the voyages of discovery made?[….] When did it dawn on the explorers that they were not discovering separate islands, but rather making their landfalls on different parts of a single continent?” (1994a: 8).

Articulation (of a spectrum of frequencies)

There is a significant gap however, between the discovery, as of a continent, and the invention of a concept. I argue that Hertz’s generation of electromagnetic waves by technical means represents in fact the first moment in the articulation of the technical radio spectrum. This is a gradation of frequencies that are transmitted and received by radio technologies, the extent, and fine gradation of which is enabled by new, and more finely tuned radio technologies

The ‘radio spectrum’ as a signifier does not have an obvious history. Early discussions of the law, politics, and science of radio transmissions tend to describe them as taking place within an ether, and regulation in the first decades of the twentieth century tends to apply to radio transmissions themselves rather than the way in which they are ordered, so that many recent accounts of the early division of radio wavelengths appear to use the word spectrum anachronistically. In early descriptions of the extent of radio waves the word ‘octave’ was more commonly used, and the earliest reference i can find to the ‘radio’, or even ‘electromagnetic’ spectrum is in a 1923 article describing the production of waves between the frequencies of infrared and the previously transmitted ‘electric’ waves, E.F. Nichols and J. D. Tear refer to each of these wave-ranges as ‘spectra’, which their experiments have finally ‘joined’ (211-214).

The graduated sequence of frequencies we consider to be the radio spectrum has expanded and intensified from this point onwards, as new technologies extend the possible frequency range of transmission and reception, and refine the means of tuning so that more intensive use of finely graded frequencies is possible. This is the radio spectrum as articulated by technology, an object that overlays and sits within the naturally occurring electromagnetic spectrum, and that was refined technically most significantly by Marconi, who also, and not coincidentally, was the first to recognise the economic possibilities of radio transmission. Marconi established the Marconi International Marine Communications Company in 1900, and from the beginning The Marconi company effectively held a monopoly on use of ‘the ether’, as it dominated wireless component production, and maintained a policy that prohibited any of its wireless operators from communicating with operators using different equipment.

Invention (of an organisational structure)

This tactic consolidated the Marconi Company’s position, but the centralisation of control over transmission in a single business was regarded as a threat to the potential openness of wireless communications, and to various national interests. By effectively controlling international wireless communications the Marconi Company was considered a threat to the sovereignty of nations.

In response to this commercialisation of the ether, and the threat to other nations apparently posed by Marconi’s tactics, the 1906 International Wireless Conference resolved the principle of interconnection, forcing Marconi’s operators to communicate with those from other countries. The more significant measure in terms of the radio spectrum however was the German proposal to divide wireless transmissions by wavelength. This was not a purely technical ideal, not just a desire to impose order on radio transmissions by officially demarcating a sequence of wavelengths; it was a consolidation of the territorial and military dimensions of that incipient spectrum. Douglas argues that the German proposal was intended to “secure, through law, military priority in the ether”, by assigning the largest and most useful wavelengths for military use (1989: 139), effectively sidelining the Marconi, and many British, stations to wavelengths considered ‘inferior’ (1989: 139-40). The division allocated “two wavelengths for public correspondence in the maritime services”, a range of frequencies for long distance communications by coast stations, and a further range for “‘services not open to public correspondence’, i.e. military and naval stations”. This moment of division, then, is the moment when the radio spectrum was invented, a means of controlling the growing communicative noise of radio. This radio spectrum is a dimension of national space to be exploited and defended by the military, a site of tension between state, military, public, and commercial interests.

Radio spectrum as division of frequencies for particular users invented in 1906:

To create order in transmission
To defend national borders from transmissions
To undermine Marconi + his economic imperatives
To assert national + military power over transmission

The discovery of electromagnetic spectrum therefore refers to the discovery of the natural spectrum, the pre-existing spectra of visible and invisible light, and the natural electromagnetic emissions that were found as receiving equipment developed. The range of wave frequencies that comprise the radio spectrum was more properly created, or articulated, as an ordered sequence of waves by the technological generation of radio waves at a range of frequencies. But the radio spectrum that allows frequencies to be allocated to specific uses by the state and by international bodies was invented as an apparatus of power, a structure invented to control the way in which radio transmissions are used and by whom. It was a necessary division that made radio useable, but reduced the ways in which it could be used.

Since 1906 the radio spectrum has been divided into wavelength and geographical bands, as different wavelengths of spectrum are regulated according to their atmospheric reach. Governments have some autonomy to allocate particular bands as they wish, within the bounds set by the International Telecommunications Union, and the tuning bounds set by particular technologies. Over the decades the radio spectrum has undergone a process of what Aitken characterises as intensification and extensification – the frequency bands have extended with the tuning capabilities of new technologies, and use has intensified as tunings have become more refined, and technologies have become better able to differentiate between each other in reception and transmission. This intensively differentiated radio spectrum is divided into wavelengths and into global, regional and local regulatory zones.

It is here that art becomes crucial of course, as a means of refiguring radio technologies that reimagine, refocus, and evade their ‘correct’, tuned purpose in the ordered, regulated radio spectrum. When we reconfigure radio technologies to operate outside their apparent purpose, we are crossing the invented boundaries of the radio spectrum, and demonstrating its constructed nature.

Zita

Sam Hamilton [Ak]

Richard Neave/Nick Harte [ChCh]

Dirtroom [Dun]

Adam Willetts [ChCh]

Silent Spring [Ak/ChCh]

Thursday 2nd October.

Music Centre of Christchurch Heritage Chapel, 140a Barbadoes Street.

9pm.

$5.

Avanc
- heaviness is inevitable as Adam Willetts summons an immense
trans-dimensional leviathan from a fathomless ocean of electrosmog

Nights
- a long overdue dose of sine tone acupuncture and static trepanation
from Richard Francis and Clint Watkins

s.c. cumuna
- experience worlds unknown as Simon Cuming pilots his homemade
spaceship beyond the darkest corners of the universe

$5
9pm
Thursday 13 September
Wine Cellar
Auckland

Tim Coster and Nigel Wright (computer computer)
Adam Willetts (negative computer)
isyd (14 minutes of….)
the Absolutionists (performing rites of vibration band)

8:30pm
$5, less for AF list members

“Seven charismatic innovators in the field of experimental musical instrument building and performance come to Auckland to join with 5 local practitioners for three intense days of public workshops and performances, where acoustical, physical, electronic and virtual worlds come together in a unique chemistry.

Akio Suzuki (Japan); Bart Hopkin, Yek koo (HelgaFassonaki), Tom Nunn (USA); Walter Kitundu (Tanzania/US); Graeme Leak, Ernie Althoff (Australia); with Marcel Bear, Sam Morrison, James McCarthy, Adam Willetts & Phil Dadson (NewZealand).”

More details on the festival website.

Sat 17 & Sun 18 March, 2pm & 7pm Mon 19 March, 7pm at Galatos Theatre, Auckland.

Each performance will feature a range of s3d artists as soloists and collaborators, and the line-up for each show will be finalised on friday.