Inhale Exhale - Cloud Chambers (868MHz Transmitter)
The work centres on custom built floating and ground greenhouse gas (GHG) chambers that measure CO₂ flux from still water and peatland ecologies on a restored cutaway bog, transmitting live environmental data via a low-power LoRa network. The chambers are creative adaptations of the closed chamber method used by peatland restoration practitioners to monitor greenhouse gas exchange.
The installation includes a transparent automated chamber housing a living sphagnum moss ecosystem beneath an ultraviolet grow light, actively sequestering carbon dioxide, alongside receivers and a filmed performance. In the film, performers unfold white, transparent black and opaque black cloths over a chamber, echoing climate-science protocols used to simulate light conditions and calculate net ecosystem carbon balance. Gestures of calibration, measurement and care become choreography.
Environmental data from the chamber is transmitted to receiver modules that translate CO₂ flux into light, pulse, number and scrolling text.
The work draws on the embodied routines of environmental measurement observed during years of field research with peatland restoration practitioners. Simultaneously signal carriers, custodians and talisman-bearers, the performers inhabit an enigmatic past-future where sensing infrastructures, ecological restoration and ritual action converge.
The antenna appears not simply as a communications technology but as a device for listening to distant signals and unseen forces. At once scientific instrument, sculptural form and ritual object, it operates as a contemporary form of magic, connecting bodies, machines, landscapes and atmospheric processes. Through low-power infrastructures, durational processes and embodied acts of attention, the work creates space for ecological care and alternative ways of relating to the more-than-human world.
The SEED project is funded by a Research Ireland COALESCE Strand 2A grant. It is led by Dr. Trish Morgan from DCU’s School of Communications as Principal Investigator, along with Dr. Shirley Coyle from DCU’s School of Electronic Engineering as co-PI.
Location: The Tower, The Digital Hub
Exhibition Dates + Times: 6-22nd of November, Wednesday to Sundays, 12-6pm
Artist Name/s (Pronoun/s): Cailean Finn
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