ACRA, NY.- Wave Farm, a non-profit arts organization and pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre, has collaborated with SunCommon, an innovator in the realm of renewable energy, to solarize its 29-acre campus, including a Study Center and a dozen media art installations, as well as its FM broadcast tower site by replacing non-renewable energy sources with clean, renewable energy to the tune of more than 58,000 kilowatt hours annually. On September 6, Wave Farm unveils a new installation: Solar Radio (2022), an automated radio sculpture powered by the sun by Peter Courtemanche, a contemporary sound and installation artist, and Anna Friz, a radio, transmission, and media artist and scholar.

SunCommon, an iSun company and B-Corp based in Rhinebeck, NY, is also an underwriter of Wave Farm’s radio station and recently produced a series of short films capturing the creativity of Wave Farm’s site-specific installations. The solar company has long believed in the power of the arts to inspire, inform, and bring more people into the clean energy movement.

"Just as Wave Farm has created a space to explore the significance of transmitting or receiving as the fulcrum of the artist's intention; SunCommon receives and translates the abundant energy transmitted from the sun into a force for good for every organization with whom we proudly partner,” said Tavit Geudelekian, integrated marketing director at SunCommon.

The company, which celebrates its tenth year in business in 2022, is also the creator of the Climate Action Film Festival, held annually in March since 2019. Wave Farm recognizes its 25th anniversary this year.

To solarize Wave Farm, SunCommon installed 108 450kW photovoltaic modules that cover the entire roof. Wave Farm will be able to convert the solar energy generated by the rooftop modules into usable electricity through innovative SolarEdge inverters. The estimated annual energy output of the new system is 58,870 kWh annually, enough to displace energy usage at the Wave Farm’s Study Center and FM Broadcast Tower. Wave Farm will be able to monitor the performance of each module for cost-effective module-level maintenance.




“We always intended to be solar-powered,” said Galen Joseph-Hunter, executive director at Wave Farm. “It was only when we started working with SunCommon that we discovered that we could not only power the property and the installations, but through remote net-metering also offset the incredible consumption at our radio station’s tower site. It was a dream come true.”

The Wave Farm solar project is an expression of how renewable energy can empower the next generation of researchers and artists who will use their facilities to make their art, and to broaden and challenge their audiences to think differently about the world in which we live.

ABOUT THE ART: SOLAR RADIO, by Peter Courtemanche and Anna Friz

Solar Radio (2022) by Peter Courtemanche, a contemporary sound and installation artist, and Anna Friz, a radio, transmission, and media artist and media studies scholar, is an automated radio sculpture that is powered by the sun. It watches the world through radio-based and bio-electric sensors—observing the state of the natural world and the sun. It tries to emulate sounds that it has heard in its environment - insects, birds, frogs, rain, wind, water, and the noises that it receives through its ELF and bio-electric sensors. The piece proposes a different way of thinking about and relating to electrical power and small-scale computational systems.

ALSO NEWLY INSTALLED: UNDERGROUND (CODES), by Yvette Janine Jackson

Underground (Codes) (2022) is a radio opera by Yvette Janine Jackson, a composer of electroacoustic, chamber, and orchestral musics for concert, theatre, and installation. Underground (Codes) features a new composition created specifically for Wave Farm, which is a response, or companion, to her earlier work Destination Freedom (2017/2022), also installed on-site, part of a series of radio operas themed around the Middle Passage stage of the transatlantic slave trade.