Wave Farm Logo (white)
Wave Farm Logo (white)

Light Waves Meet Sound Waves at Wave Farm

Wave Farm is a non-profit organization and pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre through their artist residency program, art installation park, and listener-supported radio station in New York’s Hudson Valley. They also went solar with SunCommon in 2021, combining the power of light with the power of sound, a partnership that will enable future generations to create their art more sustainably.

Wave Farm provides access to transmission technologies and supports artists and organizations engaging with media and the electromagnetic spectrum as an art form. Since settling in Acra, NY in 2004, Wave Farm intended to utilize solar power throughout their campus. It wasn’t until partnering with SunCommon that they were able to make the switch to solar and achieve their dream of offsetting their immense consumption with clean energy from the sun.

Wave Farm Galen

Galen Joseph-Hunter

Wave Farm Executive Director

Galen Joseph-Hunter has served as Executive Director of Wave Farm since 2002. She has organized and curated numerous exhibitions and events internationally, as well as published multiple books on transmission arts. Of going solar with SunCommon, she says: “We discovered that we could not only power the property here, all the installations, the study center, but through remote metering we could also offset the incredible consumption at our radio station’s tower site, and it was a dream come true.”

Tavit Geudelekian

SunCommon Director of Integrated Marketing

“Wave Farm is a perfect expression of how renewables are a key component — not just for for-profit businesses and sort of moving the margin and saving money here and there — but solar energy is going to power the next generation of researchers and artists who are going to use this space to make their art.”

Wave Farm Tavit
Wave Farm Every Radio

Solar Powered Art

Many of the art installations at Wave Farm already incorporate passive power generation through DIY solar panels. In addition, their entire 29-acre wooded campus has been electrified to give artists a number of access points to the airwaves, enabling experimentation while activating the campus as one massive instrument. By going solar with SunCommon, renewable energy is now the main source for all campus exhibits and operations.

Why SunCommon?

Between our mission to bring more clean energy to the Hudson Valley, our appreciation for independent arts, and our joy of building community through sharing stories, we were eager to make Wave Farm’s solar dreams a reality.

Curious to know more? Read up on all the details of Wave Farm’s SunCommon solar system in the info sheet.

Groenfell Meadery Solar Install

Wave Farm’s creative community radio station, WGXC: Radio for Open Ears, offers adventurous content created by over 100 volunteer programmers to listeners in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley on 90.7-FM and the world on wavefarm.org/listen. Thanks to the 108 solar panels on the Study Center roof, Wave Farm is able to leverage energy production overages to offset energy use at a second location via Remote Net Metering, covering the majority of energy used at the WGXC FM Transmission Tower site located in South Cairo, NY.

Wave Farm’s creative community radio station, WGXC: Radio for Open Ears, offers adventurous content created by over 100 volunteer programmers to listeners in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley on 90.7-FM and the world on wavefarm.org/listen. Thanks to the 108 solar panels on the Study Center roof, Wave Farm is able to leverage energy production overages to offset energy use at a second location via Remote Net Metering, covering the majority of energy used at the WGXC FM Transmission Tower site located in South Cairo, NY.

Take a Virtual Tour…

As part of our partnership, each installation on the campus has been captured in a series of short films, produced by SunCommon, embodying the spirit and experience of the art. Through this virtual tour, we are increasing Wave Farm’s virtual footprint and global accessibility, as well as drawing more folks into the Transmission Arts community. Check out a couple of our favorites and visit wavefarm.org to see the interactive map!

Pond Station

Zach Poff, 2015

Pond Station is an installation at Wave Farm that transmits the hidden activity within a pond from dawn until sundown. As the sun warms the water each day, hydrophones (underwater microphones) reveal a slow crescendo of sound: aquatic insects “sing” to mark their territory while gas bubbles rise from the pond bottom, punctuated by unidentifiable grunts and squeaks. This poly-rhythmic chorus mixes with traces of bird-song and passing cars that filter down from above. Rain on the pond surface creates a dense cloud of high-frequency detail, like the coals in a cooling campfire.

Underground (Codes)

Yvette Janine Jackson, 2022

The installation Underground (Codes) consists of two radio operas by Yvette Janine Jackson and features a new composition created specifically for Wave Farm, which is a response, or companion, to her earlier work Destination Freedom (also installed on-site). This series of radio operas is themed around the Middle Passage stage of the transatlantic slave trade: the journey begins in the hull of a cargo ship transporting Africans to the Americas; time collapses and expands as the vessel morphs into a spacecraft on an elusive search for freedom. Writes Jackson, “The Earth-planet is the archivist of our past and future (selves) / While we fight for truth(s) with soil underfoot / She transmits atemporal memories to the heavens”.

Check out Wave Farm’s full lineup of programming at wavefarm.org!

…or better yet, come visit in person!

Visit Wave Farm

Wave Farm’s installations are best experienced in person! The campus is open year-round by appointment. Please contact Wave Farm to schedule your visit at info@wavefarm.org.

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