Radio Art

I have been working in the field of radio art, and through creative practice have been considering how the convergence of new media technologies has redefined radio art, addressing the ways in which this has extended the boundaries of the art form. This practice-based research explores the rich history of radio as an artistic medium and the relationship between the artist and technology, emphasising the role of the artist as a mediator between broadcast institutions and a listening public. It considers how radio art might be defined in relation to sound art, music and media art, mapping its shifting parameters in the digital era and prompting a consideration of how radio appears to be moving from a dispersed ‘live’ event to one consumed ‘on demand’ by a segmented audience across multiple platforms. Exploring the implications of this transition through my radio practice focuses upon the productive tensions which characterise the artist’s engagement with radio technology, specifically between the autonomous potentialities offered by the reappropriation of obsolete technology and the proliferation of new infrastructures and networks promised by the exponential development of new media. Switch Off takes as its overarching theme the possible futures for FM radio, incorporating elements from eight ‘trace’ stations, produced as a series of radio actions investigating these tensions. Interviews have been conducted with case study subjects Vicki Bennett, Anna Friz, LIGNA, Hildegard Westerkamp and Gregory Whitehead, whose work was chosen as being exemplary of the five recurrent facets of radio arts practice I have identified: Appropriation, Transmission, Activism, Soundscape and Performance. These categories are derived from the genealogy of experimental radiophonic practice set out in Chapter One.

Radio Revolten: 30 Days of Radio Art documents the Radio Revolten international radio art festival that took place took place during October 2016 in Halle, Germany. It is a densely rich book that explores aspects of radio beyond the format, beyond time schedules and beyond podcast ratings, while still aiming to build a sense of community. It is reviewed by internationally acclaimed Australian sound artist Colin Black.

This thesis is an exploration of some of the discourses arising out of the current ecological crises (Haraway 2016; Horton 2017) and argues that radio art is a constructive method for opening out practices of listening, for helping move beyond anthropocentric dialogues, and simultaneously beyond the constraints of dominant modes of storytelling.

Ecological Thinking (Code 2006) and concepts of Planetary Time (Dimock 2003) are a useful framework from which to view contemporary radio art practices because they accentuate long and complex networks of interconnectivity, not only within nature, but, more recently, between living beings, technology and the environment. By identifying the interconnectedness of radio and transmission, and the possibility for immersion not only in the content but the process of the medium itself, it is hoped that recognition will be given to the necessity to think ecologically (holistically) in order to create sustainable symbioses between humans, technology and the living and ‘non-living’ entities of the planet.

I begin by providing an outline of anthropocene discourses intertwined with radio and radio art practice. Then I describe and contextualize the radio art work 'chorus duet for radio' (Donovan 2016), positioning it as an example of a collective, trans-scalar listening encounter. I move on to posit radio as a valuable medium from which to critique and disrupt masculinised and westernised (radio) histories, and as an outlet for feminist, queer, and speculative re-tellings of the past. History is viewed here in the same way as electromagnetic radiation: as matter to be untangled. Finally I use the garden radio art project Datscha Radio17 (Schaffner 2017) to give an overview of how radio can be implemented in an expanded way to examine many of the interconnected themes of this thesis: the anthropocene, radio art, ecology, human and more-than-human networks, listening, speculative storytelling, and disruption.

This thesis is an exploration of how expanded views of radio, as a natural phenomenon and a technological and artistic medium, can be used as means of resistance in times of great change.

This paper explores ideas related to Electronic Voice
Phenomena (EVP) and the disembodied voice in
mediated space as a starting point to develop a 5.1
surround sound radio art work. It documents the author’s
creative processes and 5.1 production techniques that
include a type of deconstruction of spatiality and
fluctuating relationship with sonic “reality” and fiction.
Moreover, the paper explores the notion of varying
mediated “distance” between the listener and the
recorded voice in terms of both the “length” or
transformative effect of the audio chain and/or
communication system and “time” that can be heard as a
technologically related chronological aspect.

Many theoretical accounts of sound art tend to treat it as a subcategory of either music or visual art. I argue that this dualism prevents many works of sound art from being fully appreciated. My subsequent attempt of finding a basis for a more comprehensive aesthetic of acoustic art forms is helped along by Trevor Wishart's concept of 'sonic art.' I follow Wishart's insight that the status of music was changed by the invention of sound recording and go on to argue that an even more important ontological consequence of recording was the new possibility of storing and manipulating any acoustic event. This media-historic condition, which I refer to as 'recordability,' spawned three distinct art forms with different degrees of abstraction – electroacoustic music in the tradition of Pierre Schaeffer, gallery-oriented sound art, and radiogenic Ars Acustica. Introducing Ars Acustica, or radio art, as a third term provides some perspective on the music/sound art binarism. A brief look at the history of radio art aims at substantiating my claim that all art forms based on recordable sounds can be fruitfully discussed by appreciating their joint material origins and multiplicity of reference systems rather than by subsuming one into another.

A reassessment of musique concrète, comprising historical contextualization, critical synopsis, and interpretation of Schaeffer's trajectory, from the Études de bruits (1948) to Traité des objets musicaux (1966). Henry's Variations pour une porte et un soupir (1963) are presented as emblematic of the concrete procedure.

Form in sound art is the crucial aspect for both analysis and per- ception. The theoretical basis includes, among others, the theory of ‘Pure Form’ devised by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and Susan Sontag’s theory of interpretation. Later in the text, issues of aesthetics and anti-aesthetic are mentioned. The research questions dealt with in this text were: What is the position of form in sound art and how is it related to content? What kinds of means of expression can be applied? The employed methods in- clude literary analysis and criticism as well as some elements of structural analysis. The examples analyzed in this article were broadcasts by Gregory Whitehead, Eugeniusz Rudnik, Tomasz Plata, and Antye Greie. The per- ception of the art can be disturbed by certain means of expression such as formal chaos or noise which is also considered in the text.

Paper given at the RadioArt Seminar: Radio: Past, Present and Future. Audiorama & EMS Stockholm, 8 Oct. 2010.. Published in Swedish 'Radiokonst i och utanför etern - samtid och framtid', in Nutida Musik ISCM Sweden, 2/2011, 16-21.
Published in Danish 'Kunst i og uden for æteren', in Seismograf/DMT. Contemporary art music magazine Denmark, May 2015. http://seismograf.org/artikel/kunst-i og-uden-for-æteren

Il était naturel qu'une alliance de la radio avec les arts ait d'abord rencontré la musique. Cependant, c'est le théâtre qui s'est identifié le premier à un art proprement radiophonique. La naissance d'un art dramatique conçu spécialement pour la Téléphonie sans fil a immédiatement suscité des réflexions sur les possibilités créatrices de la radio, sur les limites de la technique radiophonique et sur le pouvoir de perception de l'auditeur.

Die Erkundung von Heiner Goebbels' musikalischem Werk und seinen Schriften wirft Fragen auf, die sich allgemein für die Musikentwicklung am Ende des 20./ Beginn des 21.Jahrhunderts stellen. Als Goebbels in der zweiten Hälfte der 70er Jahre als Musiker und Komponist mit dem Sogenannten Linksradikalen Blasorchester und im Duo mit dem Saxophonisten Alfred Harth erstmals in Erscheinung trat, leerten sich bereits die Hallen der zeitgenössischen Musik. Musik ereignete sich zunehmend andernorts -in den Stadions, auf den Strassen, in den Diskos und Klubs. Die Musiklandschaft fächterte sich in unterschiedlichste Sparten auf und mit fortschreitender Technologisierung machten andere Musikrichtungen der E-Musik ihren Avantgarde-Anspruch streitig. 1976 fanden sich ca.18 vorwiegend Laien und wenige Berufsmusiker in Frankfurt/Main zum Sogenannten Linksradikalen Blasorchester zusammeneiner studentennahen, durch politische und soziale Umstände motivierten Vereinigung mit fluktuierender Mitgliederzahl. Es war eine Zeit verhärteter politischer Fronten, eine Zeit des zivilen Ungehorsam, des Aufbegehrens gegen die Staatsgewalt, gegen Atomkraft und Menschenrechtsverletzungen, die Zeit der Hausbesetzungen und Wohnkommunen, die ein autonomes Selbstverständniss und eine regelrechte Demonstrationskultur hervorbrachte. Das Orchester siedelte seine Aktivitäten im Umfeld der unorganisierten ‚Spontiszene' Frankfurts an, deren unorthodoxes Profil Plattform und Freiraum für die Erkundung eines dem außermusikalischen Anlass entsprechenden musikalischen Ausdrucks bot. Es ging ihnen darum, "das kulturelle Vakuum, wie es als puristische Folge der Studentenbewegung herrschte, mit politischbezogener Musik zu füllen" 1 , eine musikalische Sprache zu entwickeln, in der politisches Engagement bis in den Gestus der Musik und die Haltung der Musiker hineinwirkt -Musik zu politisieren. Parteipolitische Vereinnahmungen 1 Heiner Goebbels: Der Kampf gegen die Phantasie-und Geschmackslosigkeit als politische Aufgabe, in: Klaus Frederking/ Klaus Humann (Hg.): Rock Session 7. Das Magazin der populären Musik, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1983, S.104. 2 und "Stellvertreterhaltungen" 2 waren den Blechbläsern dabei ebenso suspekt wie vordergründige Politisierungsstrategien durch Texte, Botschaften und selbstverständliche Musik. Inspiration bot dem Blasorchester u.a. das Schaffen von Hanns Eisler, mit dem sich Goebbels bereits zum Ende seines Soziologiestudium in seiner Diplomarbeit Zur Frage der Fortschrittlichkeit musikalischen Materials. Über den gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang kompositorischer Maßnahmen in der Vorklassik und bei Hanns Eisler (1975) befasst hatte. Die Bekanntschaft mit dem Eislerschen Werk und besonders mit den Bunge-Gesprächen 3 regte für Goebbels die Verbindung seiner zuvor weitestgehend separaten musikalischen und politischen Interessen an 4 . Das Sogenannte Linksradikale Blasorchester intendierte wie Eisler eine Musik, die sich in die sozialen Aktionen einmischt, eine starke kommunikative Dimension aufweist, aber "nicht verdummende Wirkung" hat und sich "auch nicht abstrakt und unverständlich gegenüber dem herrschenden Hörbewusstsein verhält" 5 . Ungewöhnliche musikalische Ansätze und politische Schärfe waren ihnen ebenso wichtig wie die Lust am Spielen, Sponti-Provokationen und musikalische Frische. Die Gruppenspezifik -als ein Blasorchester mit einem hohen Laienanteil und unorthodox linkspolitischer Ausrichtung -bedingte besondere Arbeitsweisen, wie Versuche kollektiven Komponierens (Tagesschau) und

by Andreas Ammer and Console to explore the development of the special German radio art Hörspiel through soundplay and even beyond towards the concept of 'extended radio'. lt argues that the unique openness of the Hörspiel as a special kind of radio art makes it possible to respond almost instantaneously to cultural and technological transformations and contributes to the evolution of the medium of radio in doing so. Consequently this soundplay was able to dramatically articulate the rise of the network society, its swarm logic, and the evolution of the medium at a time long before these significant changes were understood by a wider public. lt did so by using 'noises' in different meanings and pushed the resilience of the medium of radio forward on three levels, aesthetic, technological and spatial.

Contemporary sonic artworks often use field recordings from places of historic or social significance to address political issues. This article discusses relevant works for radio and fixed media by Peter Cusack, Jacob Kirkegaard, Eliška Cílková, Anna Friz and Public Studio, Stéphane Garin and Sylvestre Gobart, Ultra-red, and Matthew Herbert and outlines how they use both audio and visual/textual information to create awareness of the issues inscribed in these places, from current environmental concerns to the memory of genocide and displacement.

In the UK there has never been much scope for radio art within the realm of public service broadcasting, leading artists to seek funding for their own independent projects, predominantly from the Arts Council of England (ACE) and other state funding bodies and charitable trusts. In this article, I will consider this recent avenue of practice, because its results - in terms of audience composition, artistic output and the wider cultural context of the form - shed light on both the particular context of radio art practice in the UK, and also have implications for the wider struggle for sustainable independent media networks against the diminished imaginative horizons of a public broadcast culture endlessly inured to 'unavoidable' cuts and the free market enclosure of the digital commons.

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The genre which is the basis of my research and the subject of analysis in this text is the feature, also called artistic radio documentary. The main aim of the article is to show the variety of features and the possible way to define and understand this genre. The first section describes the origins of this type of program and how it can be defined by European, Australian and American researchers. It also provides the genre pattern of feature divided into four aspects. Later in the text I describe subgenres of contemporary feature based on their structure and used sound materials. The second part of the text focuses on representations of these categories in Polish and foreign productions and tries to classify them according to the type of fiction applied or its form. The employed methods include literary analysis and criticism as well as some elements of structural analysis. The research questions I ask myself are related to the way of creating features, their form and its relation to the content.

Under the influence of digitalisation and new communication technologies, especially the WWW and its streaming technologies, the medium radio has changed drastically and rapidly within the past 15 years.  Artists were among those who have perceived these changes very early on. Some of them made them the central subject of their artistic reflection. By doing so, they positioned themselves in a tradition of radio-art, which is almost as long as the history of the medium itself, and which reaches far beyond the traditional broadcasting medium.

The title RE-INVENTING RADIO refers to this long process, in which artists continue to investigate radio as medium and radio as technology probing, within varying media-political, technological, social and economical contexts, for "radio'" utopian potential as an "apparatus of communication" (B.Brecht). In this very practice and theory, however, artists find themselves also confronted with the dystopic processes which so far have managed to change every new communication technology into an "apparatus of distribution"  and, increasingly, an apparatus of control and surveillance. Herd Listening, by Andrew Garton, is the closing chapter of Re-Inventing Radio.

Als die Punkcombo Mittagspause 1979 einen Song mit dem Titel „Intelnet“ aufnahm, war vom Internet noch keine Rede. (...) 1979 war auch das Jahr, in dem Philips seine Compact Disc vorstellte. (...) Im selben Jahr 1979 führte man in Wien (und zugleich an vielen anderen Orten weltweit) vor, was passiert, wenn man die weltumspannende Kommunikation von Künstlern ins Broadcastingsystem des Radios einspeist. (...) Das durch die Einbahnstraßen top-down und one-to-many gekennzeichnete Kommunikationsregime, das in den mehr oder minder autoritär bis totalitär verfassten Gesellschaften des frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts etabliert wurde, hatte bis in die letzten Stunden des Kalten Krieges Bestand (...) Die Vernetzungskünstler der achtziger und neunziger Jahre setzten die emanzipatorischen Möglichkeiten des Networkings mithilfe neuer und alter Kommunikationstechnologien in die Designs ihrer Projekte um (...) Allein diese Konstruktion eines interinstitutionellen Projekts über Landesgrenzen hinweg hatte weitreichende ästhetische und politische Konsequenzen, wie Heidi Grundmann 1995 in ihrem Report zum Kunstradio-Projekt „Horizontal Radio“ analysierte (...) Über 200 Künstler nahmen an Horizontal Radio teil, die Zahl der involvierten Organisatoren, Redakteure und Techniker ist unbekannt. (...) Senden zu dürfen, war einst ein emanzipatorisches Ziel. Heute verheißt die Möglichkeit senden zu dürfen, wenn sie nicht schon längst in die Pflicht zu senden gekippt ist, nicht notwendigerweise Gutes.

This Audio Paper argues that the documented history of human interaction with radio is a matter to be unravelled, and pirated. The 'first documented radio listening experience' is questioned, and followed by the proposal for alternative radio histories-that disrupt, critique, and reach beyond the usual masculine, western, 'modern' tellings of this era.

Interweaving scientific research into the capabilities of human hearing, with the often spectacular occurrences of natural radio (such as the Auroras, lightning and meteorites entering the earth's atmosphere), this audio paper takes seriously Donna Haraway's statement: "It matters which stories tell stories" (2016), and therefore purposefully entangles radio history with feminist, postcolonial, and speculative tellings of the past.

Here, the notion of listening is used in an expanded sense, and as such is posited as a way to pay attention to-and foster care and respect for-not just the voices, sounds and gestures which often go unnoticed, but also the possible histories.

Listen here:
https://seismograf.org/fokus/sonic-argumentation-ii/donovan

Read more about audio papers here:
https://seismograf.org/fokus/fluid-sounds/audio_paper_manifesto

Cette annexe contient : (I) le début abandonné de ce que aurait été le deuxième chapitre de l’Essai sur la radio et le cinéma, ayant pour titre « Données immédiates de la radio et du cinéma », chapitre mentionné dans le texte que nous avons établi comme « Chapitre 4 » ; (II) la transcription de ce manuscrit par Sophie Brunet ; (III) les notes manuscrites de Schaeffer pour le quinzième paragraphe, « Des idées aux choses et des choses aux l’idées », de l’Essai sur la radio et le cinéma ; (IV) la transcription de ce manuscrit par Sophie Brunet ; (V) la transcription complète du texte de l’Essai sur la radio et le cinéma tel qu’il se présente dans le premier cahier du dossier 960 avec des notes interprétatives de Carlos Palombini et les premières corrections de Sophie Brunet ; (VI) un extrait du Journal de Schaeffer avec le compte-rendu de la visite du 6 mai 1942 à André Malraux.

Este anexo contém : (I) o início abandonado do que teria sido o segundo capítulo do Ensaio sobre a rádio e o cinema, intitulado “Premissas imediatas da rádio e do cinema”, mencionado no texto que estabelecemos como “Quarto capítulo”; (II) a transcrição deste manuscrito por Sophie Brunet; (III) as notas manuscritas de Schaeffer para o décimo quinto parágrafo, “Das idéias às coisas e das coisas às idéias”, do Ensaio sobre a rádio e o cinema; (IV) a transcrição deste manuscrito por Sophie Brunet; (V) a transcrição completa do texto do Ensaio sobre a rádio e o cinema como ele se apresenta no primeiro caderno do dossiê 960, com notas interpretativas de Carlos Palombini e as primeiras correções de Sophie Brunet; (VI) um excerto do Diário de Schaeffer contendo o relato de sua visita de 6 de maio de 1942 a André Malraux.

This essay begins the work of unpicking radio-anthropocene entanglements, in an effort to think and do them otherwise. I use the concept of expanding radio to open out the notion of radio to include human and more-than-human electromagnetic signals and argue that by drawing upon practices of expanded listening, more-than-human radio ecologies can be revealed, thus enabling a constructive move beyond the anthropocene. I consider magnetite a material embodiment of radio-anthropocene entanglements; anthropogenic magnetite is produced by traffic fumes and can affect human memory, while biogenic magnetite can be found in migrating organisms to aid wayfinding. I conclude by bringing all of these issues together in describing the radio art piece Nightcall Radio.

This paper explores ideas related to Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and the disembodied voice in mediated space as a starting point to develop a 5.1 surround sound radio art work. It documents the author’s creative processes and 5.1 production techniques that include a type of deconstruction of spatiality and fluctuating relationship with sonic “reality” and fiction. Moreover, the paper explores the notion of varying mediated “distance” between the listener and the recorded voice in terms of both the “length” or transformative effect of the audio chain and/or communication system and “time” that can be heard as a technologically related chronological aspect.

Contemporary sonic artworks often use field recordings from places of historic or social significance to address political issues. This article discusses relevant works for radio and fixed media by Peter Cusack, Jacob Kirkegaard, Eliška Cílková, Anna Friz and Public Studio, Stéphane Garin and Sylvestre Gobart, Ultra-red, and Matthew Herbert and outlines how they use both audio and visual/textual information to create awareness of the issues inscribed in these places, from current environmental concerns to the memory of genocide and displacement.

This article examines Walter Ruttmann's Weekend, a twelve-minute programme made for German radio in 1930. Recorded and edited using Tri-Ergon optical film sound technology, it was described by Ruttmann in the following terms: ‘Weekend is a study in sound montage. I used the film strip to record the sound exclusively, yielding what amounts to a blind film’. The programme is often referenced in histories of sonic art, since Ruttmann's ‘cinematic’ use of montage seems to have prefigured the developments that took place in musique concrète over a decade later. However, despite being a well-known piece of work, Weekend remains critically neglected: a footnote to Ruttmann's better-known work in cinema. The article aims to revisit and reappraise Weekend as a radical modernist work by considering not only its status as a pioneering piece of sonic art, but also its intermediality. Ruttmann's deployment of filmic techniques within a radiophonic context can be seen to radically challenge the differentiation of art forms and media that has been seen to define modernism, and by situating Weekend within the context of Ruttmann's broader project as an artist, the article examines how the relationship the programme forges between cinema and radio might be understood within in a history of radical modernism.

The essay considers the work of New Zealand-based artist Sally Ann McIntyre, in particular her mini-FM radio station for programme-based and site-specific art transmission, i.e., Radio Cegeste. The article focuses on a series of radio projects in which the artist investigates avian acoustics at the crossroads between museology and this medium’s history. Based on several conversations with the artist and a long interview, the essay offers an appraisal of the myriads of ways in which McIntyre approaches issues such as New Zealand's colonial past, nationalism, as well as the environment. At the same time it situates McIntyre's production within the larger context of other contemporary art with birds. The essay argues that operating in the realm of sounds both with an ear to birds, and with critical attention to the technological and institutional history of the medium of radio, McIntyre translates for radio Mark Dion’s call to artists that they resist nostalgia.

Presentation of one of the audio tracks of "A Sonic Map of Alexandria" co-created by the Berit Schuck (text) and Julia Tieke (sound) and published under the name "The Bohemian Past". The talk focused on the sounds and interviews used for this track and  discusses the relations between the post-war culture of Alexandria and its contemporary nostalgic representations.

Also published in: Digitale Sinneskulturen des Radios – Multisensual Digital Radio Culture, (dt./engl.), hrsg. v. Golo Föllmer, MLU-Selbstverlag, eBook in den Formaten ePDF und ePub (siehe elektron. Publi.), Halle 2014

In 1901, Marconi’s Lizard Wireless Telegraphy Station, Cornwall, was the site of the first ‘over-the-horizon’ wireless transmission. Prior to this, wireless communication was believed to be restricted to the optical horizon. Marconi’s transmission of a simple di-di-dit, signalled not only the letter ‘s’, but also an escape from the visible and concrete.
Tapping the air is a creative research project performed through occasional, covert residencies at the Wireless Station and other sites associated with radio and listening history. Each ‘residence’ concludes with a micro-FM transmission, broadcast from the site to an unknown and unknowing audience. Tuned-in through six portable radios the transmission is composed from field-recordings gathered in local landscapes haunted by the architecture remains of listening and communication technologies. These mute hosts of signals sent, received and lost, became the focus of a field-recording process, which itself became a form of listening-in on landscape, a tapping into listening.
This paper is a transcript from a performed lecture, which uses a choreographed assemblage of field-recording, imagery, text, voice and live FM transmission to explore the relationship between sound, materiality, landscape and loss.

In Search of Captain Cat of Llareggub

"A 'Play' for Collected Sounds"

Duration 25 minutes

Composed and Produced by Colin Black


About The Work

Inspired by the fictional blind character of Captain Tom Cat in Dylan Thomas’ classic Under Milk Wood, this new sound composition unearths the captain’s secret soundworld that is based both on actual location recordings and constructed dreamscapes. It is a soundworld full of the lyrical, sonic charm of Welsh fishing villages, nuanced from Captain Cat’s melancholic and nostalgic yearning for the past. In a sense we are travelling along sonic pathways into memories that dissolve into acoustic dreams; as in Thomas’ work, ‘the long drowned nuzzle up’ against our ear and tease the living, in this new auditory experience.

In Search of Captain Cat of Llareggub crosses existing borders and genres … it’s a kind of musical work constructed chiefly from sound, but not exactly music concrete, nor is it a radio drama or documentary. It is a sonic painting, infused with the tantalising echoes of Cardigan Bay (West Wales) and the breath of Dylan Thomas’s Captain Cat. In fact after Douglas Cleverdon produced Under Milk Wood for radio in 1954 he stated that it [Thomas’s work] ‘… has no rules determining what can or cannot be done. And though it may be in dramatic form, it has no need of a dramatic plot’ (British Radio Drama 1981: 9). In a sense Black is exploring this possibility in his new work … it has no rules but the goal of developing a language out of sound, from recordings gathered in Welsh fishing villages on Cardigan Bay. Moreover, it is a hybrid audio work that takes the listener into an exotic and imagined composed soundscape, a space where the sea sings.

Some key elements of this work include radiophonic arrangements of sea shanties sung by Gerald Morgan in Welsh, the traditional folk song “Y Wasgod Goch” [The Red Waistcoat] that tells the story of being haunted by a recently deceased lover, as sung by Mr Robert Pierce Roberts and Bach’s “Fuga sopra il Magnificat” that has been augmented with a chiefly stratified texture of the sounds of sheep, the sea and a blacksmith at work. In addition to these, the work contains location recordings from Thomas’ house in Laugharne [Welsh: Talacharn], and New Quay [Welsh: Cei Newydd] (which are believed to be the inspiration for Under Milk Wood), sparse interviews with locals describing New Quay, Welsh maritime historian David Jenkins describing life at sea, archival recordings from the audiovisual archive at St Fagans, National History Museum including Mary Jane Rees’ interview explaining the Welsh myth of adderstones that are believed to cure blindness, sounds from aboard various ships in motion and other coastal locations in Wales. Finally, an acoustic theme that runs through this work is that, in sonic reality, the boats are heard as beached or docked and tethered by ropes to the quay, or attempting to start their motors. It is only in Captain Cat’s dreams and day-dreams that the boats are free to set sail on his emotional sea of nostalgia.


Credits

Produced, Composed, Recorded and Mixed by Colin Black

Interviewees: Gerald Morgan, David Jenkins, Winston David Evans and Yasmin Evans.  Sea Shanty Singer: Gerald Morgan Captain’s Voice: Clive Woosnam

Archival recordings courtesy of Meinwen Ruddock-Jones and the audiovisual archive at St Fagans, National History Museum. Archival recordings include “Y Wasgod Goch” as sung by Mr Robert Pierce Roberts and Mary Jane Rees’ interview about the Welsh myth of adderstones.

Location recordings from Wales, edited, compiled and mixed at Frequency Oz (Australia) by Colin Black

Special thanks to:  Bernard Clarke, Yanna Black, David Jenkins, Winston David Evans, Yasmin Evans, Meinwen Ruddock-Jones, Ian Heights, Mair Humphreys, Kevin Sumption, Captain John Dikkenberg, Clive Woosnam, Stephen Adams, Peter Gage, St Fagans, National History Museum, Ceredigion Archives, Dolphin Spotting Boat trips (New Quay), The Australian National Maritime Museum and the crew of the HMAS Advance and HMB Endeavour.

At the beginning of 1948, three senior managers in the Radio Italiana organized a congress with a view to setting up an international competition for original creations for the radio. Their reflection on how such production could be fostered grew out of the awareness of the «enormous difference between the purely reproductive and the creative forms of artistic activity in radio broadcasting». In order to remove «the barriers which still keep artists and cultural figures away from the microphones», the enlightened managers favoured an international radio competition which would foster «works conceived and created exclusively in terms of the special requirements and very special resources of radio technology», to be promoted by, and circulate among, the various national broadcasters who adhered to the initiative.
The first edition of the Prix Italia took place in Venice in 1949, and it was not long before the competition became the most important event in radio broadcasting. In my contribution I will scan the list of works presented at the Prix Italia from the beginning till the early 1970s, in order to reflect about the some features that stand out when comparing titles of both winners and participants. In defiance of the climate of consensus and euphoria which has always surrounded the Prix Italia, one might wonder whether the objectives and expectations concerning the competition, and first and foremost the creation of a specifically radiophonic repertory (in the field of Radio Drama as well), can be deemed to have been realised. With my analysis I would like to provide a first, partial answer to this question.

This paper considers how I used the Internet to promote analogue radio art projects, focusing on Switch Off a PhD radio art project, which took as its theme the imagined futures of FM analogue radio when abandoned by sanctioned broadcasters, presenting future sonic possibilities of analogue FM radio after a 'digital switch-over' one which has been proposed (and as yet postponed) by the UK government and how this works within a post digital understanding of radio and the net. It also considers the problems of using the net as archive for radio art works.

La «sound piece: in memoriam Décio Pignatari» a été conçue et réalisée à l'invitation du compositeur espagnol José Iges pour la série radiophonique Kunstradio-Radiokunst de la ORF, diffusée le 14 Juillet 2013 et actuellement disponible sur le site radioartnet (http://www.kunstradio.at/2013B/14_07_13.htm/#3). L'oeuvre a eu comme point de départ et épine dorsale structurale la chanson Noigandres IV pour soprano, clarinette et piano, de J. A. Mannis, composée sur le poème "Hombre" de Décio Pignatari pour le projet «poesia paulista», crée et organisé en 1997 par le pianiste Dante Pignatari et le compositeur Eduardo Guimarâes Alvares.

"During the weekend of October 12-14 2012, corresponding with the Hudson Valley’s peak fall foliage weekend, free103point9 will host a first Transmission Arts Colloquium. This gathering includes an exciting international roster of participants with expertise regarding the issues informing the transmission arts genre. Attendees were selected so to comprise an intimate group, whose discussions during the colloquium will be shared with public audiences through broadcast and publication. Participants include:

John Anderson (DIYMedia.net/Brooklyn College, Brooklyn)
Manuel Cirauqui (Dia Art Foundation, New York)
Christoph Cox (Bard College/Hampshire College, NH)
Anna Friz (Artist, Chicago/Montreal)
Magz Hall (Canterbury Christ Church University/University of the Arts London)
Galen Joseph-Hunter (free103point9, Acra)
Jeff Kolar (Radius, Chicago)
Bonnie Marranca (PAJ Publications, New York)
Valerie Tevere (CUNY Staten Island, New York)
Tom Roe (free103point9, Acra)
Gregory Whitehead (Artist, Lenox, MA)
Jonathan Wright (Folkestone Fringe, Folkestone, UK)
Elisabeth Zimmerman (Kunstradio, Vienna)

Participants were each given one of three statements and questions to which they will respond during the Colloquium panels:

1) Transmission Arts and Contemporary Art Forms
Transmission Arts is a true form of Intermedia, developing an interface or dialogue between multiple media. If we define transmissions arts broadly as encompassing broadcast, installation, communication networks, composition and performance—in public spaces or on airwaves—what is your understanding of the potential of this mode of work for the future? What is your definition of "the contemporary" in transmission arts? Where is it pointing for the future?

2) Rethinking Transmission Media
From the early days of experimentation, electronic communication has inspired utopian aspirations among artists as a means to bring together diverse groups of people in an immersive human community. These ideals remained fervent in the digital age, where possibilities for instantaneous networks and intricate feedback circuitries offer the promise of interrelationships among unlimited numbers of participants. At the same time electronic communication may be equally described by imperfect conditions of dispersed feedback, partial and broken signal, and entropic decay.

Transmission art engages with these complex socio-technical conditions and circumstances of transmission, often as direct critique of state and/or corporate communication infrastructure and systems. How do they rethink transmission media in order to engage with the issues of power, ownership, and access to the electromagnetic spectrum? How do transmission artists approach the deep and unavoidable philosophical tension between utopian dreams of union and the status of interference and noise?

3) Ecology and Sustainability
If we think of artworks as part of an elaborate ecosystem—a community, incorporating artists and the public in cultural, economic, and political interconnectedness—how can we work toward sustainability? What tools do the different species of transmission arts have to develop creatively in this wider network of understanding? How can they evolve in the context of contemporary social and economic systems and the intermingling of art forms?"