I am currently producing a new work for Ramesgate Festival of Sounds Sonic Trail running 10-13th Sept.
A Copper Web: Thanet Ether
In December 1928, Ramsgate became an experimental zone for Rediffusion. In wireless broadcast’s early days, standard radio sets were expensive luxuries and the spectrum was highly volatile. Atmospheric static, fading signals, and local radio frequency clutter filled the airwaves. Along the Thanet coast, constant radio chatter from military aircraft at nearby RAF Manston obliterated over-the-air frequencies, creating a wall of unwanted noise. Rediffusion bypassed individual tuning and hardware entirely. A high-gain master aerial array captured weak waves at a central hub. Signals were cleaned, amplified, and re-diffused over a physical grid of overhead wires into rented household loudspeakers, transforming a chaotic wave into an affordable, noise-free broadcast.
Under Siege
During WWII, Thanet became the frontline known as Hellfire Corner. This domestic auditory network shifted from entertainment into a vital infrastructure of resistance. Kept on a 24-hour civil defence alert, it was shielded from outside RF chaos, carrying air-raid warnings and emergency dispatches when the sky faced enemy radio-direction finding. This era birthed polyethylene (polythene), bridging domestic listening with modern warfare. Declassified from top-secret radar projects, this polymer provided unprecedented high-frequency dielectric insulation for cables. Physical ghosts remain hidden in plain sight; older Thanet properties still feature original Rediffusion polyethylene cables, junction boxes, and iron brackets bolted to brickwork. However, petrochemical polyethylene carries a severe ecological toll, persisting for centuries and fragmenting into toxic microplastics. This material crisis forces the electronics industry to look toward bio-based alternatives like sugarcane bio-polyethylene or renewable bioplastics.
Re-Diffused Warfare Today
A century later, Rediffusion’s architectural ghost dictates survival across modern electronic warfare battlegrounds. Today’s environment features intense targeted RF jamming; traditional long-range wireless links are instantly intercepted, blinded, or hit by kinetic strikes. Modern militaries have abandoned direct long-distance transmissions for an evolved tactical radio relay hierarchy:
- Mobile Strategic Hubs: Armoured vehicles projecting directional, high-bandwidth digital beams.
- Airborne Drone Mesh Networks: Loitering munitions with radio modems flying in frequency-hopping chains.
- Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET): Infantry systems where handheld radios, vehicles, and helium balloons act as autonomous, self-healing relay nodes.
While tactical networks operate invisibly, warfare’s sonic and visual fallout is re-diffused via personal social media relays. Handheld screens replace passive loudspeakers, relaying algorithmically amplified frontline dispatches via first-person drone feeds, encrypted Telegram channels, and TikTok clips. A profound paradox emerges: the military relies on hyper-localised relays to hide coordinates, yet raw acoustic trauma is immediately uploaded un-shielded, becoming a global, viral artefact within seconds.
In the Gallery & Signals Over Silence
Inside the gallery, invisible frequencies gain physical, sculptural gravity. In the gallery I am planning to web with recycled polyethylene wire cables—synthetic vines acting as both medium and barrier, showing petrochemical persistence. At the centre sits an active micro radio relay pulsing sound through this web, forming an automated acoustic archive looping transmission and resistance.
Audiences walk through narrated residents war experiences, colliding with modern jamming device sounds, material waste, and electromagnetic signals. Ultimately, to relay a signal is to overcome a hostile, broken medium. Whether using WWII copper wires, airborne drone chains, or smartphones, the human impulse remains identical: a refusal to let the signal dissolve into silence under fire.
QR codes will also be placed around Ramesgate near QR codes for the exhibition with sound from the work on them placed around the outdoor trail can also be fixed near surviving physical remnants of the Rediffusion network, drawing attention to the historic wall brackets and cable boxes still visible on the town’s buildings.
When scanned by visitors, these digital nodes emit highly localised, low-volume “signals”—isolated modern warfare sounds like the high-pitched buzz of a surveillance drone and the chime of a contemporary smartphone air-raid app—giving the impression that modern conflict data is actively leaking from the old wires.
Magz Hall 
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