Transmissions
In The Dark What’s New: The Meaning of Alexa
Owen Duff UK 2023)
The Owen Duff (UK 2022)
6 min
Owen Duff is an independent musician who also works part time for a London council. In the past couple of years he’s been experimenting with sound art, after taking a music masters course at Goldsmiths University.
“The Meaning of Alexa” is one of the pieces that he made on the course - an improvised piano and voice “duet” between Owen and an Amazon Echo smart speaker. It was originally a live performance, with improvised questions and piano playing in response to Alexa’s answer. Owen then edited and augmented this with sound design and also added in recordings that the Amazon Echo took itself, of him. It was inspired by writing on digital capitalism and neoliberalism by authors Han Byung-Chul, Wendy Brown and others.
Produced by: Owen Duff
My Synthetic Thoughts
Samuel Robinson ( 2023)
Samuel Robinson (UK 2023)
14 min
In 'My Synthetic Thoughts' the protagonist grapples with puzzling experiences, seeking meaning in a labyrinth of mental health, medication, memory, and the subconscious. Amidst the fog of unresolved time, their quest for understanding and peace becomes a poignant journey, revealing the intricate tapestry of their psyche.
Produced by Samuel Robinson
The Peephole
Andrea Kristinsdottir (US/ISL 2023)
Andrea Kristinsdottir (US/ISL 2023)
10 min
A deepdive into a workplace bathroom. What exactly happens there other there other the obvious? Why would you not want to do the things that you’re supposed to do there?
Andrea Kristindottir likes to focus on the smallest everyday places that reveal musch more about the wider world around us.
Produced by: Andrea Kristindottir
Soft Life: Time
Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié (UK 2023)
Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié (UK 2023)
32 min 3 of 4
This four-part series takes the idea of ‘soft life’ as a launch off point to explore alternative ideas around work, time, the body and ecology emanating from Somerset House and beyond. They talk to radical thinkers, artists and writers, who are carving out these new ways of being in the body, centring the soft and the in-between, finding space for rest and looking at ways of expanding time beyond the clock.
How can we make time free?
This episode contemplates different ways of experiencing time beyond the linear, with Somerset House Studios artist Shenece Oretha on transforming time through the practice of listening, sociologist Judy Wajcman on unpicking progress from speed in the digital sphere and psychologist Dr Ruth Ogden on how our experience of time is relational and whether it’s possible to conceive of ‘free time’ in a modern world.
Produced by: Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié
Sound by: Axel Kacoutié and additional music by Ellen Zweig
Produced by Somerset Studios
XMTR Radio Hour Ep24 : Tapes and Time
Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
60 min / Episode 24 of 24
This Transmitter Radio Hour is an ode to tapes and time, featuring Glasgow based sound artist Steve Urquhart’s Doing Bird a mixtape recorded with inmates at Perth Prison (Scotland), a meditation on time by Brighton based composer and sound artists Joseph Wilkinson and a wonky plunderphonic mixtape by Bristol based Limbo Tapes.
1. Radio producer and sound artist Steve Urquhart worked with inmates at HMP Perth engage with archive birdsong and oral history recordings from the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club in a unique, creative audio art collaboration.
You can listen to side B of Doing Bird here
2. Joseph Wilkinson is a composer, sound designer and audio artist based in Brighton, exploring the relationship between sound and our inner worlds. He collaborates with his wife and creative partner Cam Brandow as Farfar Studio, their combined channel for enchanting experiences through bespoke music, sound, and storytelling.
I sit in the shade is a short form documentary that is a meditation on time, our relationship to it, and the world around us. A mix of introspection, interviews with thoughts from authors, thinkers and tree-people.
3. Side B of Limbo Tapes is from a compilation of sounds made for monthly show Radio Limbo on Noods Radio, which is the flagship for cassette label, Limbo Tapes, a collaboration between Pete Hazell and Sean Lee.
You can hear side A of Limbo Tapes here
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
Follow the series
I Am Better Than I Was
Myriam Pruvot (BE 2018)
Myriam Pruvot (BE 2018)
14 min
Music and spoken word in fragments with texts taken from Mohamed Ali's speech before his fight with George Foreman in 1974 mixed with extracts from the diary of a young woman.
Produced by Myriam Pruvot
Night Walking - A Call from Terry
Bianca Giaever ( 2023)
Bianca Giaever (US 2023)
29 min Episode 1 of 4
Constellation Prize, the podcast from The Believer magazine, talks to subjects about their existential problems—how art, God, and loneliness fit in their lives. Nightwalking, is a four-part mini series featuring the poet Terry Tempest Williams.
Bianca receives a call from a famous writer, Terry Tempest Williams, who suggests they do a project together. They plan to embark on a ritual—taking walks at night, and writing each other daily letters. Terry promises that this will bring them closer to God. Bianca has doubts.
Hosted and produced by Bianca Giaever
Radio Armed Response
Claudia Wegener (ZA 2007)
Produced by Claudia Wegener (ZA 2007)
60 min
South Africa based artist Claudia Wegener from Radio Continental Drift walks the streets of two suburban communities in Johannesburg S.A. In door to door interviews, at times through intercom systems and across gates, she asks questions related to public safety and a privatised security system. The result is a radio artwork mixed from what the artist likes to call dramatic field recordings. In surprisingly intimate, often humorous conversations, narratives of a complex urban patchwork of communities unfold before your ‘very eyes’. Yet what unravels, far beyond ‘issues of security’, social and urban divisions are shared concerns, questions, stories and visions about living together.
Producer: Claudia Wegener
The original half hour audio piece from 2005 is reframed in recent footage for London’s art radio station Resonance104.4fm
Recommended by Paris based sound artist Dinahbird
I Sit in the Shade
Joe Wilkinson (UK 2023)
Joe Wilkinson (UK 2023)
11 min
'I sit in the shade' is an exploration of our perception of time, discovering what we can learn if we spend more time in the presence of trees. It draws from personal accounts, interviews and narration, and uses sound and music to form an immersive, personal meditation around these topics.
Narrated and Produced by Joe Wilkinson