Pilot Light Media is a showcase for experimental audio and visual artists. We propagate the work of our solo and collaborative artists by documentation, publishing, distributing, and exhibiting their most compelling pieces.

Lead Artist- Alexei Easton

Alexei earned his BBA in Marketing from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in 2002. While studying, he contributed to the local arts community through curating, managing, creating organizations, and performing. Alexei has participated in a broad spectrum of artistic and cultural organizations including Historic Milwaukee, Inc., 91.7 FM WMSE, Bucketworks, and Burning Man.

Alexei has traveled extensively both domestically and abroad, visiting 26 states and 9 countries. He has gathered much of the raw materials for his work from these travels including gathering natural objects, time lapse and still photography, and recordings. Much of the inspiration for his work has come from these travels including exploring historic sites in France, Switzerland, Austria, and Mexico. He has also studied birds and natural flight on the beaches of Tampa, Florida and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Alexei is currently living in Milwaukee in a classical Italianate home. He has handsomely restored this property as well as many other structures throughout the greater Milwaukee area. He is also the owner and President of Northstar Property Development; a residential restoration company, which he began in 1999.

Edwardian Transmissions
recent works by Alexei Easton

Edwardian Transmissions is a series of aural representations of the world’s first wireless communications. They are pieces of what electrical waves and audio may have sounded like during the frontier of the air. Examples include Morse code, Marconi communications, shortwave radio, and the dawn of FM radio.

These waves had their own unique traits based on the source of the wave and the materials they passed through. Early radio equipment was built of cardboard, wax, wood, and various metals. Many of these metals used were not pure. Early copper contained traces of other metals, creating a proprietary blend. The wires they forged yielded their own brand of sound.

Popular turn-of-the-century building materials also affected these waves. Materials such as marble, terra cotta, and limestone certainly leave a different fingerprint on waves than vinyl, plastic, or asphalt. Add to this a stately Dutch Elm, versus today’s skinny maples, and you have a different transmission altogether.

It must have been a wonder to hear these early outputs. Although weak and unstable, they floated effortlessly in the empty skies. The static filled scratch of an old sea captain reporting his position, or some of the worlds first DJ’s, armed with primitive transmitters and relays. Their final destination was the tiny receivers in the ships, laboratories, studios, and homes across the globe.

Today, we have all sorts of electronic waves darting across our atmosphere. From radio and television, to infrared interfaces, two-way radios, and cellular technology, our buildings and bodies are bombarded with electronic fields. Again, these waves have their own traits contributed to by today’s conditions.