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
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
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
Chop 10
Tarikh Korula (US 2005)
Tarikh Korula (US 2005)
4min
Exploiting the techniques of current commercial radio practice, <em>Chop 10</em> re-mixes a live, dynamic assemblage of commercial radio streams as a commentary on the current state of regulated radio. As "Chop 10" moves from one Arbitron-rated Top Ten radio station in New York City to the next, the hyper "scan" makes it impossible to discern any single station's content, resulting in a jumpy, never-ending parody of commercial radio.
Producer: Tarikh Korula
Mother In The Fridge
Felix Kubin (DE 2012)
Produced by Felix Kubin (DE 2012)
30 min
What does your own mother sound like in the refrigerator? Felix Kubin tried it. And not only that. His mother also speaks from the cooking pot, the waste bin and a box. And in English, too, because the son not only does acoustic experiments, but also has to practice for a trip abroad. The mother is doing well. From the various containers she gives little lessons in English grammar by phone. An Oedipal burlesque without a script.
Producer: Felix Kubin
Produced for Vicki Bennett’s extensive “Radio Boredcast” project at AV Festival Newcastle, UK.
Recommended by Paris based sound artist Dinahbird
At The Edge Of The Platform
Dominique Petitgand (FR 2011)
Dominique Petitgand (FR 2011)
6 min
Standing, outside, on the edge of the platform, and the feeling that your head is being cut off. "They're asking for, they're asking for, they're asking for, they're asking for, they're asking for the impossible"
Producer: Dominique Petitgand
Voice: Marta Dansie
Featured on Radiola (Belgium)
Radio Armed Response
Claudia Wegener (ZA 2007)
Produced by Claudia Wegener (ZA 2007)
60 min
London 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
Soundwalk In The Morning Rain
Lina Chang (US 2020)
Produced by Lina Chang (US 2020)
2 min
An audio collage of field recordings from NYC, made in response to Cities and Memory's collection 'Smithsonian Treasures'. Inspired by a letter addressed to Miss Wheaton, by the artist Elizabeth W. Capron as part of the Smithsonian Treasures online exhibition of recordings submitted in response to the Smithsonian collection.
Producer: Lina Chang
Mother In The Fridge
Felix Kubin (DE 2012)
Produced by Felix Kubin (DE 2012)
30 min
What does your own mother sound like in the refrigerator? Felix Kubin tried it. And not only that. His mother also speaks from the cooking pot, the waste bin and a box. And in English, too, because the son not only does acoustic experiments, but also has to practice for a trip abroad. The mother is doing well. From the various containers she gives little lessons in English grammar by phone. An Oedipal burlesque without a script.
Producer: Felix Kubin
Produced for Vicki Bennett’s extensive “Radio Boredcast” project at AV Festival Newcastle, UK.
Recommended by Paris based sound artist Dinahbird
Magneto Mori Vienna
Mark Vernon (UK 2019)
Produced by Mark Vernon (UK 2019)
47 min
A fragmented sound portrait of the city constructed from found sounds, buried tapes and field recordings. In this de-composition sounds from Vienna’s past and present are conjoined in a stew of semi-degraded audiotape.
Using a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder sounds from around the city were recorded direct to tape over a two-day period. This tape was then cut into fragments and buried in a hole in the ground with a number of tacky souvenir ‘Vienna’ fridge magnets that erase the portions of the tape that they come into contact with. After several days steeped in the muddy earth of a Viennese garden the remaining audio fragments were exhumed, washed, dried and spliced back together in random order.