Tree Antenna
V&A Museum

A thrilling remake of a 1904 experiment in which live trees antennas act as antennas for radio contact. Simple and magical at the same time: the combination of nature and technology. This concept was not developed any further at the time, but now BioArt Laboratories has decided to take up the challenge again.

In the beginning of the last century, it was discovered that it was possible to make radio contact across the Atlantic using living trees as antennas. The trees acted as exceptionally good antennas, but the how and why never got beyond speculation. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated means of communication, research into the matter died a quiet death. At the Victora & Albert Museum’s exposition The Future Starts Here, BioArt Laboratories exhibited her concept Living Network: a Worldwide Web of Trees, with a prototype of the Tree Antenna.