Joyce Hinterding
Floric Antenna 1 & Floric Antenna 2

Floric Antenna 1 & Floric Antenna 2 are energy scavenging loop antenna derived from a study of the growth pattern seen in orange lichen found in the Wollemi region of the greater Blue Mountains World Heritage. This small orange lichen is surprisingly robust, growing on rocks with few nutrients or water but successfully converting the electromagnetic energy of the sun into an optimised resonant receiving structure. In a world where mobile telephones contain fractal antennae, and fractal mathematics appear wherever we are approximating and describing the real, it stands to reason that the fractal patterns revealed through plant structures are potentially dynamic or have a hidden functionality.

In Floric Antenna 1 & 2, the medium of drawing connects to the technological world of circuit diagrams and the graphic language of electronics. Using the Voronoi algorithm, the image of the lichen is transformed into space-filling curves. This rendering of the natural growth patterns of lichen is then stencilled onto glass as a very long graphite conductive line that loops and twists around, never crossing over itself.  In this way, the resulting pattern becomes the basis for a different type of electronic component, an experimental receiving and energy scavenging form derived from botanical observation.