CRAIGOWL HILL TOUR
Sneha Solanki and fellow Maxwell City participant, invited me to collaborate with her on a Craigowl Hill Tour. Craigowl Hill is a present day British Telecom microwave relay site based on the highest summit of the Sidlaw Hills near Dundee, Scotland.The station was originally utilised for top-secret intelligence gathering purposes from the early 1960’s for the United States National Security Agency (NSA). It is unknown if this is still the case. Speculation suggests that like other dual commercial and Ministry of Defence (M.O.D.) controlled stations within the U.K, the Craigowl Hill site could also serve the M.O.D. and the privatised economy in parallel.
The tour to Craigowl Hill was a walk through the geographical terrain up to the station summit whilst simultaneously seeking (or avoiding) the invisible electromagnetic emissions from the site. There were three stopping points on the tour, where new topics of discussion were introduced, such as boundaries and tresspass, particles and waves, positive and negative space as regards electromagnetic radiation. At the summit, the group collaborated in an attempt to create personal and communal Faraday Cages, which are shielded areas free from EM radiation; in effect creating an ‘invisible’ radio space whilst ironically because of the sheilding materials used, remaining highly visible.
A DVD of the Craigowl Hill Tour was edited by Sneha Solanki and was shown as part of the University of Dundee’s Multicultural Day in December 2007.
