This video documentation shows the activation of a rectenna device during an open lab session at the TRAFO art gallery (Szczecin – Poland) in March 2025. The rectenna was developed by ON3MCR. At TRAFO, ON3MCR collaborated with artist Isabel Burr Raty with the aim to measure and rectify/transmute energy from the surrounding electromagnetic radio frequencies and bio-electric body signals. While ON3MCR activated the rectenna device, Isabel guided the participants of the lab session through the exploration of ancient, esoteric vibrational body techniques.
Building a rectenna device
A rectenna is a technical device for wireless power transmission. It ‘receives’ electromagnetic signals in the form of radio frequencies (RF), which can range from microhertz to hundreds of gigahertz, and converts them into electricity. Thereby, the rectenna also ‘rectifies’ alternating electric current (AC) which periodically reverses its direction and the flow of electric charge into a waveform by converting it into direct current (DC) that flows steadily in one direction. DC is the kind of electricity that you find in batteries, which act as DC storages, and other electronic devices that need a constant and stable flow of power.
The RECTifying antENNA was first tested in the 1960s by US electrical engineer William C. Brown for converting electromagnetic energy in the form of radio waves into direct current electricity [1]. Currently, rectennas are increasingly researched and deployed as a means for harvesting solar radiation for satellites, or as power sources for small wireless microelectronic devices: Near field communication, RFID tags and contactless smart cards.
Figure 1: Left: Rectenna for harvesting radio waves with point-to-point soldered components. / Right: Rectenna by W. C. Brown, Source: Microwave Symposium Digest, vol. IEEE, no. 1984. DOI: 10.1109/MWSYM.1984.1131793.
A rectenna consists of an antenna and a bridge rectifier circuit that consists of four diodes. The diodes are needed to rectify AC induced through electromagnetic waves in the ‘receiving’ antenna and convert them to DC power. The properties of the diodes, especially the rare earths that are built into them, decide on which frequency you can harvest energy from in the electromagnetic waves in the air. There is an unjust political economy and an unequal global distribution of resources that is built into the diodes: hence the need to work with recycled materials.
During our residency at TRAFO in Szczecin, we passed through a lot of electronic shops in search of diodes that we could use in our rectenna. Schottky diodes, also known as hot-carrier diodes, are commonly used for energy harvesting because they have a low voltage drop and a high switching speed, and therefore have the lowest power losses. They can be found in (and recycled from) high performance devices like mixers, detectors and electronics in automotive systems and renewable energy technologies. We looked, in particular, for Germanium diodes which have an even lower voltage drop and are ideal for receiving lower radio frequencies. They were used in crystal radio receivers and other niche applications like temperature sensors and are, as a result, hard to find. Luckily, our search in Sczcecin was successful. In one shop, we were presented with a box of germanium diodes, sourced and recycled from old radio equipment. The rectenna was composed with point-to-point soldering in which the leads of the components are used to connect and complete the electronic circuit (see Fig. 1, left).
Besides making the rectifier bridge, the most important part in making this project was designing and fabricating an antenna. For this project we opted to not just build an antenna, but challenged ourselves to work with an antenna array, that is, a set of simple antennas – called “elements” – that work together as a single antenna, using interferences to improve its performance.
Figure 2: Left: Antenna array, 2025, pcb, cupper wire, antenna’s / Right: Antenna array, 2025, pcb, cupper wire, antenna’s.
The open lab session ‘Towards energy restoring’
In March 2025 we deployed the rectenna device in the speculative and interactive open lab session Towards Energy Restoring at TRAFO. The workshop builds on Isabel’s ‘Spine Project’ [2] and aims to foster imagination, awareness and speculation about the intra-active relations between our bodies and physical and immaterial matter.
During the four-hour session we experimented with ten participants on how to generate and release collective bodily electric charges. These charges were measured in millivolts (mV) before and at the end of guided body practices. For the session, Isabel installed ten D-mats (“dis-charge mats”), which were made with copper mesh (1,5m x 50cm) and were connected to TRAFO’s building electricity grounding point. For each participant she provided a face mask and a bamboo stick. She also installed a sheep woolen wearable sculpture, placed as a semicircle to surround the rectenna device, which was placed in the middle of the space.
Figure 3: ON3MCR installing the rectenna surrounded by research artifacts designed by Isabel with organic and recycled materials.
Prior to starting the session, Isabel introduced her work and ON3MCR invited the participants to hold the rectenna device with their hands so that the initial values of energy received by the antenna could be registered. Then, Isabel started the session with a discharging exercise. The participants gently massaged and tapped the soles of their feet with the bamboo sticks to open the nerve endings located on this part of the body, to make their nervous system vibrate and become more porous. Next, the group layed down on the D-Mats. The copper mesh in the mats is designed to conduct the excess electricity produced and accumulated in bodies – due to constant exposure to the electromagnetic fields emitted by the machines that we live with (smartphones, Wifi routers, TV, computer, IOT, etc.) – into the grounding point of the building. They therefore “earth” or “ground” the lying bodies and their bio-electric fields. The intention was to call upon The Earth’s magical power to transform the surplus energy into a life force, through which our bodies’ bio-electrical levels could be restored. Isabel designed this exercise to create spaces for the participants’ inner potentials to re-emerge, awakening dormant molecules that enhance our human sensorial abilities and change our states of perception.
Figure 4: Isabel facilitating ‘The Mummy’: A wool wearable sculpture designed to contain bodies after the session.
After the discharging, the participants engaged in a swirling body practice, which was inspired by Kung-Fu techniques that are said to increase the bio-electrical levels of the body, by transforming sexual energy into a primordial force. Following Isabel’s instructions, the participants would stimulate the bio-electrical forces in their bodies through a spiral motion. Subsequently, they again touched the antenna with their palms to convert the potential bio-electromagnetic energies produced during the exercise into the rectenna. At a particular moment, ON3MCR, who was monitoring the rectenna output, detected a sudden unexpected, almost incredible increase, of electric charge.
However, the intention of the workshop was not to measure body bio-electricity. Rather we intended to rectifying radio frequencies emanated by the bodies of the participants during the work session. Beyond thermodynamic or static electricity, the idea was to speculate, or interrogate, whether the level of bio-electricity inside and expelled by the body was transmuting into some kind of electromagnetic radiation: perhaps photonic energy? produced by light swirling through the body? and channelled it so that we could rectify it into electricity? Indeed, electric circuits have electromagnetic radiation as a by-effect, thus it is also important to note that probably other radio frequencies were also captured at the same time (e.g. emitted by the antenna attached on the device).
Following this open lab session, ON3MCR also consulted an engineer to try to understand the increase of electric charge that had suddenly appeared. According to them, the effect was probably an effect of thermocoupling. But is the technoscientific explanation all that we can say and know about this phenomenon? Or, is the enigmatic increase of electric charge detected by the rectenna a starting point for further feminist para-scientific speculations?
A techno-transhack feminist conclusion
This open lab session was designed to open a parascientific research space outside of the ‘objective western scientific logic’ that tends to dominate discussions of electromagnetism, antennas, and the wireless. It highlighted non-western experiences and conceptions of the body, the brain, palms or hair as transmitters of power, as kinds of antennas. In ancient China, for instance, in practices of Qiqong, hands are understood and trained as antennas. This is due to the fact that the nerves terminate in the extremities of our bodies and skin, where nerves can function as bio-electrical conductors, always generating and transmitting energy. And, by radiating this inner power source to the outside, beyond the outer surface of the body, is a mastery that can be learned and practiced for multiple purposes.
Figure 5: Work session participants’ palms emanating power into the rectenna, after enhancing the bio-electric circuitry of the body.
From a techno-transhack feminist approach, these bio-electrical notions of the body, of human antennas, and of metaphysical and mystical experiences generate meaning and constitute a form of knowledge distinct from technoscientific approaches. They afford a capacity to rethink ourselves in relation to the techno-capitalist society and its constant innovative apparatuses, developed in the name of ‘progress’.
Along these lines, we consider our TRAFO experiment as a feminist para-scientific experience. On the one hand, it encourages us to speculate about the human as a transceiver of electrical power, and of the ways in which we are immersed in surrounding electromagnetic fields. What if we made use of this bioelectric eco-source in ethical ways and stopped instrumentalizing the electrons that flow through matter and our bodies? What if we stopped converting this energy into forms of consumption and technologies? We might awaken our senses and feel more entangled with ‘everything’ that surrounds us. Thus, the rectenna experiment also addresses the continuous exploitation of free-flowing electrons that are harvested and conducted through grids to turn on energy-consuming devices and supply ever more power-greedy appliances. It also highlights how mastering the world is linked to the acceleration of atomic matter and the radiation of electrons at various electromagnetic frequencies around us.
On the other hand, the rectenna offers a gateway to possible strategies for dealing with the explosive presence of radio frequencies, as well as, what radio amateurs call, ‘dirty electricity’: leaks in our electricity networks. Lots of kilowatt-hours of power on different frequencies that permeate the spaces in which we live, work, commute, exercise, consume, study or relax and which electrosensitve people experience as harmful to their bodies and minds. In this sense, the open lab session ‘Toward energy restoring’ aimed at declaring the electromagnetic fields as a commonly shared earthly critical natural resource that we can process and (back)channel to the mutual benefit of people and earthly/cosmic beings.
Thanks
This project was developed as part of a residency and exhibition held at at the TRAFO art gallery as part of the project TEKHNÉ * – Be Aware of Sound. The project was co-funded by the Creative Europe program and the City of Szczecin and by the ERC through the multimodal WAVEMATTERS Activating Waves series.