From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
the frequencies that straighten
This article concerns a 2022–2024 participatory installation in Lagos. For the motif of frequency-correction, see The Radio Corrects the Eyes; for Leif's doubled vision, see Leif's Doubled Vision.
A participatory audio installation that invited Lagos residents to walk specific routes through Mainland while listening to binaural frequency broadcasts via low-powered community radio receivers. Participants reported sensory "straightening"—the correction of doubled vision, spatial disorientation, temporal uncertainty—through exposure to frequency sequences rising from 20 Hz to 528 Hz and beyond.
The installation referenced Leif's corrected vision in the radio igloo (Half Two, Chapter 4), where raising frequency past the robots' hearing threshold simultaneously straightens the protagonist's sight. Here, the apparatus was inverted: the frequencies straightened the listener, not the narrative.
Route stations included the Lagos Lagoon breakwater, Styx Creek (named after the novel's setting), and the old broadcast ruins near ███ Broadcasting House . Solar-powered repeaters[1].] amplified transmissions at dusk.
The work remains undocumented beyond participant testimony and a single recovered frequency log dated October 2023. No official organizer has emerged [citation needed].
See also
- Radio and pirate broadcast in Beach Surgery adaptation
- Leif's doubled vision
- Synaesthetic adaptations
- Lagos adaptations of Beach Surgery
References
- ↑ Devices mounted on tree-branches in Makoko, Lekki Lagoon marshes; operational status post-2024 disputed [cn