The Gold Line
DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult (FR 2018)
17 min
In 2016 DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult began Antenna Gods, a composite art project on the use of radio waves by high frequency traders. In June 2018 they undertook a journey between the New York stock exchange, now a data centre in Mahwah, New Jersey, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in Aurora, West Chicago. The time it takes for data to be transmitted from one centre to the other via a network of microwave repeaters is 4.01 milliseconds, faster than the blink of an eye. These microwave repeaters are placed on towers that follow a geodesic path between the two exchanges. The actual route of the towers takes you over the Allegheny mountains of rural Pennsylvania and past many an Amish homestead, through the flat plains of Ohio, and in front of the immaculately mowed lawns and the blue ‘Make America great again’ flags of Indiana.
Some of the towers are a requisition from the AT&T long lines network and can be found at the end of long dusty roads where the presence of new comers is instantly noticed. Some are new and specially commissioned for the purpose. They are unremarkable, just another shape in amongst the spikey cell phone antennas that litter the interstate. DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult’s ‘slow’ high frequency round-trip along what Chicago traders nick-name the Gold Line, took twenty-four days. Along the way we documented these outposts and their surroundings using image and sound. They learned about the past and present uses of these transmission towers that are both a material memorial to radio history, and a physical reminder of passing time.