Here the direction is reversed. At the focal point of the dish, where the LNB used to sit, we have fitted a lamp and a coil of enamelled copper wire. The dish no longer receives; it emits. A copper down-lead runs the length of the mast and terminates in the soil at an earth spike, so the whole assembly is coupled to the ground it stands on. A small wind turbine at the head supplies the power.

Electroculture is an agricultural practice from the turn of the twentieth century. Its proponents claimed that atmospheric electricity, gathered by wires and aerials and led into the earth, would make crops grow faster and stronger. The claims were never settled, the field faded, and it survives today mostly as folklore, copper spirals in vegetable gardens, and a persistent thread of online belief.

We are not trying to prove it. Its unresolved status is what makes it useful: a technique that sits between science, superstition and speculation, and that asks what infrastructure is for. Version 3 continues the series begun at Verte Inc.

The antenna is one of the works hosted on NEUTRAL HOST, our shared mast built from reclaimed materials. The mast carries the works of several artists at once; this one occupies the cross-boom at mid-height, alongside the equipment of others.

The gesture is small and the effect is unverifiable, which is the point. A dish that once brought television from a satellite now points at a hedge and glows faintly at its focus. The hardware of broadcast infrastructure is turned around and pushed back into the soil, on the chance that something grows.