What Makes Us Human: in Search for a Ghost Signal
Updated: Jul 2
To begin my thesis is to acknowledge that it does not truly begin here. This exhibition emerged from an accumulation of signals, of questions, of encounters with systems that at first may appear to be merely machines that turn noise into patterns but, through my research I’ve understood the process of their activation gradually revealing an entanglement within itself. I also come to know how I am part of that activation. A conversation with a guest from my first live sound performance clarified this for me, offering a simple but lasting insight; that this moment in my career might feel like the beginning of my journey, but it truly is just a part of an ongoing process already in motion.
In retrospective, my work has moved through structure as if the answer is always outside of itself. My processes know nothing. I am not concerned that I know nothing, because then I can know everything; more precisely I studied the creation of worlds through mediums that can create from nothing: drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, sound, installation, dance, transmission, observation. These are only categories intended to portray the lived experience, and although this list of titles seems extensive, I never really thought of myself as an interdisciplinary either. My creativity has always felt closer to experimentation, than representation, an alchemist of light and time. The need to merge disciplines felt like a necessary response to a more fundamental condition of the creative universe, or origin of it: that the world we see does not present itself into definitive measurements of time. When we see, hear, or in general, perceive something apart from something, or a less past, it happens according to rule that our perceptions remains present for an interval although not without modification.
Similarly, later research I’ve associated objects as concepts that split into an antithesis of authenticity. The question of origin orients towards a nonlinear dynamic and fractal geometric string of mental mapping every time belonging to an earlier and a later version of itself. What I’m referring here demonstrates how physical matter moves through space within a system governed by bounded conditions for how our perceptions see that transitivity as a simultaneous one rather, a series of iterative processes that rearranges itself infinitely in many varying complex, non-repeating patterns (Heinz).
For example, If we place an object in a vacuum field, and we wait for a fairly decent amount of time, its entropic properties can be expressed as an infinite sum of energetic contributions from an array of correlations between particles. If you can imagine a mirrored cube, like a Yayoi Kusama infinity room, although in this example i’m thinking about, no-one can ever enter the room, and there’s a single light at the center, reflecting itself for all and eternity, or until we collectively no longer think about it.
Image captured inside Yayoi Kusama infinity room at the Contemporary Museum of Houston, Texas.
Accordingly, energy begins to transform matter into every possible state through arrangements that console and consolidate explosively in concentric micro-states, in fact, every possible arrangement that could exist, will exist. From this proposition, we can say perception behaves like a form of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of strange attractors where the distance between each arrangement continues to grow exponentially.
We tend to have this view of reality that everything feels as if its happening instantaneously— information travels from one point to another within a single moment, appearing all at once, and directly in front of us. I might even call it a mode of registry between the observer and nature, what Edmund Husserl would describe as the embodied structuring of internal time-consciousness, “Being.” As brilliant and fascinating as this may sound, this idea about life presupposing its own change and movement until its perceived is far more complex. (Husserl)
This artwork is part of the permanent collection of the Contemporary
Museum of Art Houston, titled "Cube in Sphere" (1979) by the renowned
Czech glass artists Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová
Even at the level of micro- transformations, this is not the case. The reality is that we know existence can be stretched, with how perception involves duration— mainly because light takes time to travel. Time is the unifier. It constitutes the fourth dimension of which the three spatial dimensions are structured into spacetime. What we perceive,
then, is never the now—its never the present but a constructed moment composed of signals that have already traversed through space and time. We see the past as the active state, yet feel the time of its occurrence backwards. This is because there it no infinite speed; every transmission requires duration before it can be experienced.
In this sense, the “now” is not a singular point, but a synthesis of layered converging events that have already occurred-already occurred. Time becomes the condition through which perception arrives in sync with our precise position. Some contemporary interpretations, such as those proposed by Robert Lanza (3), extend this argument further, suggesting that the observer plays a constitutive role in the formation of reality itself. While such views remain debatable, or pushed into the realm of metaphysical, they underscore the extent to which perception is not a passive reception, but an active process of world-building.
The Medicine Buddha Sand Mandala, a rare and significant piece in the San
Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) permanent collection
My exhibition, A————— B, ad Infinitum, situates itself within that instability, proposing what we call reality is shown as an active field shaped by our relations to its conditions. Its parts continuously formed by walking through a sound scape while observation, mediation, and recurrence of its postulating context, while observing the relations between notes from every instant. My role as an artist here, is not to represent the world as I see it, but to create space in which I can become a participant in its unfolding— to design and construct systems that allow certain aspects of this field to become perceptible, and if anything, allowing that light to become meaningful of its display.
These systems may take the form of kinetic sculptures, signal-based transmitting antennas, fields of memory in motion, or simulated environments; but despite their differences, they share a common function: they operate as interfaces between human perception and processes that typically exceed it.The question of time and its relation to the speed of light is central to this investigation. Rather than treating time as a linear progression with which objects are situated, this work approaches time as something emerging through the propagation of light, moving across space, both local and extended. Time in this sense is not neutral self-contained, but an emergence through conditions of transmission, delay, and registration. It does not preexist these processes; it is articulated through them.
The Installations of my work operate as temporal sites where duration can be stretched, compressed, or looped, and where the distinction between past and present begins to dissipate. What the work reveals is a moment that is “unstable,” constantly shifting and in a temporal “off-set,” but limited by the finite speed at which information arrives: 299,792,458 meters per second. What I found most intriguing is that once the fragments of this experience transit into vibrations, their loop forms cyclical structures which result in a organized cloud of complicated dynamics.
Eric Acuña
Death of Resonance : A Static Cord (Audio-to-Visual Conversions)
Steel stand, Solar panel, Sound mixing deck,
Laser-diode, Parabolic mirror, Audio speaker, LCD monitor, Assorted electronic components and wiring, various cables, Sound, Stone and concrete fragments
Dimensions Vary
2025
For reference, I present a study of such fractal basin boundaries arising in a physical experiment. A plastic ball tied to a string attached to the ceiling. Inside this ball is a neodymium magnetic sphere, that gives the ball momentum to swing in all directions. Below the pendulum are two driver-motors from repurposed ceiling fans. I adjust the length of the string so that the ball is close to the motor, where a set of 3 rotating magnetic spheres on each motor-driver, all of the same pull-weight ratio.( see figure 1) Holding the ball close to each of the three magnets, we can feel the attracting forces; when we let go of the ball close to the magnets, the ball stays put. When we release the ball somewhere else, we can observe how the pendulum swings back and forth; and when the course of the ball comes close to one of the magnets, the direction of the movement drastically changes due to the attracting forces.
Figure 1. Top view of the trajectories of the pendulum through a MIDI computer. Same initial point in the lower left point, but different friction parameters (low friction on the left and high friction on the right), Note that the final rest point of the pendulum is not the same in the four experiments of 53 revolution studies
In general, the pendulums swing seems dramatic and unpredictable, but eventually it finds a equilibrium state due to the friction involved— such as air resistance, and internal friction in the string, the attachment and so on. The pendulum eventually loses momentum and situates itself, in what may appear at rest, but of course this would take a very long time before the magnets themselves excite every possible position, within an array of shifting conditions until they stay absolutely put. Among my archived materials, I found no definitive evidence to either prove, or disprove the all points on the pendulums swing, nor to substantiate my suspicion that these sometimes radical transformations are inherently subjective.
Eric Acuña
Synchronizations (Magnetic Pendulum)
Neodymium Magnets, Acrylic Sphere, Direct Drive motor, MIDI micro-controller, synthetic oil, Galvanized suspension cable
Dimensions Variable
2023
Within this framing, the idea of measurement is never fixed within a purely spatial domain; it can also be equally extended into the temporal domain as well. What is seen is not identical from one observer to another, but is shaped by the conditions through which we ask: what it is that we see? What are the essential functions that places us in a role? It is performed within a pre deterministic design— one that is particularly creatively making connections between every node on a net of spacetime typography.
We think we exist, therefore we experience death.
So then when we ask ourselves, “what is the universe?”, we can find ourselves at a limit: in which thought can extend forever in a circling question without ever arriving at a final resolution. But is that the human desire to locate what continually exceeds its grasp? A similar condition exist in transmissions. A signal sent into space will never reach its totality, because there will always be regions beyond its reach. So where is the signal? The universe extends beyond any complete address, even as light— our fastest carrier of information— moves within it at a finite speed (figure 2).
Figure 2.
Klaus Rinke
Deplazierung (Changing Location according to the point in time)
1972
Photo Collage on card
But can we call this absence? Perhaps there are parts of the universe, that within this human body, become limited to our access— comparable to frequencies that remain imperceptible without the means to receive their arrival. To encounter this invisibility, perception itself must be tuned, modulated, and recalibrated. This notion of tuning extends towards the proposition of an unbounded universe, but one that is also finite.The question that has been pondered by many philosophers and thinkers throughout history: if the universe is acceleratingly expanding forever— and if I am somehow traveling through it, forever— then what happens, if I keep going through it in one direction, would I will end up back here, assuming that such a feedback loop resolves this continuity-of-self problem.
However, it would seem illogical that I end up somewhere else, or in another kind of universe, or even possibly in the re-entry of someone else’s form or body. How do I try to explain the possibility that I am within another body, while still well-knowing of myself being in my own body (Kegan). It does seem somewhat reasonable to think about that encounter as a link to a recurring self, shifting the site of reality from the body, to the architecture of perception and thought
itself.
The concept of déjà vu, historically associates altered states of perceptions, memory displacement, and anomalous cognition, frequently thought of as a disruptions in the continuity between perception and temporal experiences (Jung). Within contemporary perceptual discourse, such phenomena have been expanded beyond purely psychological explanation towards forms of telepathic or dreamlike experiences that resemble the “close encounters of the fourth kind”, (CE4) an encounter classification system developed by J. Allen Hynek following his involvement with Project Blue Book. (Hynek, figure 3)
Figure 3. Crop Circle in Wheat Field, Knoll Down, Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire, July 2000. Found image
Eric Acuña
1420.2222 mHz: Iron and Sound
Iron filings, radio frequency transducer, adhesive, paper
50 x 50
2024
As these perceptual displacements occur, my theory is that they appear to do so through systems of transmissions, delay, and feedback forms. Within this sense, objects no longer resolve into singular or permanent entities, but unfold through layered geometric subsets that register as temporal events. The persistence of these forms become sustained through light, through repetition and variation. Apparent solidity gives way, to continuous re-productions of itself across time, and maintained through interactions between material, energy, and environment, gradually receding into fluctuating fields of pattern and difference.
The Horse in Motion 1 & 2
DIY Zoopraxiscope, 3D stereoscopic software,
Projection display, signal distribution hardware
(splitters, extenders, processing units), Magnet, Iron Fillings, power supplies and surge
protection, assorted cabling, audio output
Dimensions Variable
2026
In response, my work engages these conditions by constructing systems that track, translate, and modulate this process— simulation, then, becomes a critical tool through certain behaviors associated with spacetime, signal propagation, or feedback; which can be modeled within localized structures that reproduce dynamics of larger systems. In other words, a dimension in one field, can be coded into another, combining general relativity with the holistic principle of "undivided wholeness,” or the idea that everything is in a state of process or becoming (Bohm). Accordingly, wholeness is not a static oneness, but a dynamic wholeness-in-motion, in which everything moves together in an interconnected process. From this perspective, perception organizes itself in relation to these dynamics. These simulations utilize the space as a active field, transforming the installation into a wholistic environment in which perception becomes an extension of it.
At the human scale, sound and vision are the most important external sensory signals which help us to interpret the world around us. In some sense these signals are related; in another sense they are very different . Essentially the mode of light and sound is the same, namely waves. The wave model is also significant in the discussions of heat radiation within complex systems such as thermal dynamics. Due to the work of Leonhard Euler, Daniel Bernoulli, Joseph Louis Lagrange, and Jean Baptiste Joseph de Fourier (1768 - 1830) (Heinz) waves, no matter how complicated, have a beautiful common description in mathematical terms. The Fourier transformation is a series of mathematical equations which converts functions of the time domain to describe tones in terms of harmonics. The wonderful point about the Fourier series is it allows a description of something as complex as a radio signal, to be determined both mathematically and electronically. Finding this encoding becomes a problem of a sound, lens system such as a Schlieren optical system— where the superposition of pure harmonics in a sound system correspond to the superposition of the light and lens system.
Droste Effect, Video Voyager study snapshots, University of Texas at San Antonio, VRC labs
Thus, if perception is conditioned through transmission, delay, and temporal register, then signals themselves can no longer be understood as singular or immediate phenomena. What appears continuous is often composed of layered frequencies, oscillations, interruptions, and recurring intervals that are distributed across time. In this sense, the signal becomes less an isolated event from a singular moment, and more a composite structure whose internal organization must be decomposed in order to be understood.
Eric AcuñaSignal Dissonance
Parabolic mirror, Laser Diode beam, various laser diodes, solar panel, Speaker, Analog to Digital Converting circuitry, Aluminum steel, various cabling
Dimensions Variable
Signal Dissonance, a DIY optical bench developed throughout an accumulation of this research drawing from schlieren imaging techniques that visualize refractive disturbances otherwise invisible to the naked eye. By registering the deflection of light through gradients in transparent media, these systems reveal fluctuations embedded within transmissions itself, rather than fixed objects (see figure 4). This logic extends into the laser-audio apparatus used throughout the installations, where sound is transmitted via light vibrations, modulating the sound frequency into an optical displacement. Sound becomes a visible signal structure (see figure 5). In both cases light operates as a carrier of temporal and spatial variation who disturbances become legible through processes of filtering, amplification, and decomposition. Within this framework, capturing terrestrial and extraterrestrial emissions, oscillating pendulum trajectories, magnetic feedback systems, and laser-audio transmissions can all be approached as temporally structured signals whose behaviors unfold through a series of events that occur through a reverse encoding course of action, also known as “shadowwork”.
Figure 4 Diagrams of a schlieren optical system illustrating the visualization of refractive index variations in transparent media. Reproduced from Gary S. Settles, Schlieren and Shadowgraph Techniques: Visualizing Phenomena in Transparent Media (Berlin: Springer, 2001)
Figure 5. An image visualization of the refractive index of a heating iron through variations in transparent media. Reproduced from authors studio
A—— Time, within the conditions of this work would not behave as a simple casual sequence of events representing external things with biological structures. Rather, perception seems impossible to have a beginning, which it can hardly be a question at all of anything but synchronicity— emerging through shifting spatial and temporal relations that produce the apperception of consciousness through systems of resonance, synchronization, and sympathetic exchange. These questions surrounding perception ultimately extend beyond localizing systems and into broader fields of radio astronomy, where the act of observation itself depends upon the translation of imperceptible electromagnetic waves into perceptible forms.
Installation view of “Continuum”
Transparent sheets, Galvanized steel beams, oscillating motorized fans
Dimensions Variable
2026
Unlike the optical bench, which observation relies upon visible light to travel directly to the human eye, radio astronomy operates through frequencies that remain otherwise inaudible and unseen without special radio instruments. Detection therefore becomes an act of fine-tuning; signals dispersed across vast spatial and temporal distances must be received, filtered, amplified, and decomposed before they can emerge as intelligible structures. The turner becomes a kind of chosen portal where energy can transform into lived experiences, echoing earlier in the considerations of how energy expands through entropy.
In this sense, my artistic practice can be understood as ritualistic— memory as ritual: a sustained engagement with materials and processes that produces perceptual coherence through fluctuation and recurrences. Memory itself begins to resemble a sustained energetic force field around the light passing us, transmitting, and then continuing to reconstruct the experience across time, ad Infinitum. ——B
Eric Acuña
The Chihuahuan, searching for a ghost signal in the desert.
Outdoor speaker, Audio recorder, microphone, modified satellite-antenna, tripod, power bank, software
Site-specific
2024
Citations:
Bernard F. Burke and Francis Graham-Smith, An Introduction to Radio Astronomy, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 2024 - 26
C. G. Jung, "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle," in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, trans. R.F.C. Hull, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 417–519.
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 48
Gary S. Settles, Schlieren and Shadowgraph Techniques: Visualizing Phenomena in Transparent Media (Berlin: Springer, 2001)
Heinz-Otto Peitgen, Hartmut Jürgens, and Dietmar Saupe, Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science, 2nd ed. (New York: Springer, 2004), 45–52. 758,
761, 774
Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 40-64
Lanza, Robert, with Bob Berman. Beyond Biocentrism. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2016. 43-88.
Shelly Kagan, Death (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012)
Footnotes:
Figure 1 : Heinz-Otto Peitgen, Hartmut Jürgens, and Dietmar Saupe, Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science, 2nd ed. (New York: Springer, 2004), 758,
761, 774.
Figure 2: Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones, The Artist’s Body (London: Phaidon Press, 2000), 123.
Figure 3: Hynek, J. Allen. "Crop Circle in Wheat Field, Knoll Down, Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire, July 2000." Digital image. Accessed May 3, 2026.
Figure 4: Diagram of a schlieren optical system illustrating the visualization of refractive index variations in transparent media. Reproduced from Gary S.
Settles, Schlieren and Shadowgraph Techniques: Visualizing Phenomena in Transparent Media(Berlin: Springer, 2001), page number.
Comments