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2018

 

Lost Bandwidth (Canopy), First Thailand Biennale

Krabi, Thailand 

Lost Bandwidth (Canopy), 2018

powder-coated steel, coaxial cable, transmitter, solar panel, solar panel controller, battery

each element 1800m x 2500mm

**first set of images shot in Auckland

Working across various material fields, Dane Mitchell's practice channels invisible forces into concrete forms and teases out the potential for objects and ideas to appear and disappear. Most recently, the artist has been exploring the various ways in which objects might be seen to produce literal signals.

For the Thailand Biennale, Mitchell has produced a newly commissioned work, Lost Bandwidth (Canopy), consisting of four biconical antennae, each tethered to an operational FM transmitter. Located in national parks across Krabi, Lost Bandwidth (Canopy) broadcasts the songs of extinct birds collected by Mitchell from online archives.

These tripodal antennae are each paired with a shorter tripod that generates power from sunlight. On one hand, Lost Bandwidth (Canopy) can be read as a series of physical objects – each painted bright red, an adaptation of "international orange", to differentiate them from their surroundings and underline both their status as exotic visitor and their existence on the physical plane. On the other, each antenna generates an electromagnetic field across the FM bandwidth, creating a radial sphere of activity – a signal – across the airwaves, demonstrating that these objects extend beyond their physical edges to produce an unseen, yet heard, effect that permeates outwards.

The broadcast is an ongoing event, occurring 24 hours a day throughout the Biennale and extending beyond it. Over time, the artist will add further birdsongs to the transmission as species continue to become extinct.

In an elegiac act, the work brings vanished species momentarily back from the dead, available to anyone who tunes in via the airwaves. In this way, Lost Bandwidth (Canopy) creates immaterial appearances in a metaphysical sphere – transmitting a past into the present: that which is gone and never to return.

Dane Mitchell ©  2026

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