Transmissions
Telephone / Georgia - Iceland Sound Connection
Community Radio Tbilisi (GEO 2022)
Ágústa Björnsdóttir - Martraðarmaðka (GEO 2022)
9 min
A project based on tighter audio connections between several artists living in different places (Georgia, Iceland). Being inspired by the whispering game Telephone, creating a chain of author's audio-works, which respond to each other. 9 young artists were selected from Georgia and Iceland, interested in radio art or sound art. The first artist from the chain produced a sound work that was shared with the second artist from another country. The following produced work as a response to the work and shared with the third artist from the chain etc. The artists had a week to produce the responsive content / audio gesture.
The works are part of a weekly program of Community Radio Tbilisi and Seyðisfjörður Community Radio.
Participants: Rati Eradze – Ágústa Björnsdóttir Gvantsa Jgushia – Mio Storåsen – Khriantel – Brák Jónsdóttir – Archil Tsereteli –Vilhjálmur Yngvi Hjálmarsson –Mariam Abashidze
Concept curator : Bara Gallo
Coordinator, producer: Þórunn Dís Halldórsdóttir
The Gold Line
DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult (FR 2018)
DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult (FR 2018)
17 min
In 2016 DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult began Antenna Gods, a composite art project on the use of radio waves by high frequency traders. In June 2018 they undertook a journey between the New York stock exchange, now a data centre in Mahwah, New Jersey, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in Aurora, West Chicago. The time it takes for data to be transmitted from one centre to the other via a network of microwave repeaters is 4.01 milliseconds, faster than the blink of an eye. These microwave repeaters are placed on towers that follow a geodesic path between the two exchanges. The actual route of the towers takes you over the Allegheny mountains of rural Pennsylvania and past many an Amish homestead, through the flat plains of Ohio, and in front of the immaculately mowed lawns and the blue ‘Make America great again’ flags of Indiana.
Some of the towers are a requisition from the AT&T long lines network and can be found at the end of long dusty roads where the presence of new comers is instantly noticed. Some are new and specially commissioned for the purpose. They are unremarkable, just another shape in amongst the spikey cell phone antennas that litter the interstate. DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult’s ‘slow’ high frequency round-trip along what Chicago traders nick-name the Gold Line, took twenty-four days. Along the way we documented these outposts and their surroundings using image and sound. They learned about the past and present uses of these transmission towers that are both a material memorial to radio history, and a physical reminder of passing time.
Recorded and produced by DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult
Composed for broadcast on Radius FM
Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2010 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Radius produces, exhibits, and distributes work by radio and transmission artists from around the world. Listen via wavefarm
Infinity = Zero
Alyssa Moxley (US 2014)
Alyssa Moxley (US 2014)
31 min
Audio Walks for Armchair Listening Mini Series
In Jorge Luis Borges’ story The Library of Babel, the world is made up of an infinite network of hexagonal libraries containing all possible iterations of books with 410 pages and 22 characters. Books can resemble each other in all but one letter. Some volumes can be read in multiple languages with entirely different interpretations. Others have meaning only coincidentally. The librarians who inhabit this world are overwhelmed with information, most of which is nonsense. In a search for deliberate meaning, many wander through the libraries in a quest for the Crimson Hexagon, a library containing books of small format, illustrated, magical, and containing revelatory insight.
Infinity = Zero produces the conditions for radio listeners to sculpt senseless cacophonies into form through their movement as they walk the halls and navigate obscure corners of the stairwells of 37 South Wabash, Chicago. In a participative choreography beginning at The Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, listeners will take the path of those who search for the archival material of insight and meaning within books, people, objects, and architecture. Fractured and collaged narratives create ambiguous worlds where the fictional world of hexagonal libraries interacts with the environment of the Sharp building’s hallways and archival collections.
Produced and Narrated by : Alyssa Moxley
Composed for broadcast on Radius FM from The Joan Flasch Artist Book Library
Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2010 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Radius produces, exhibits, and distributes work by radio and transmission artists from around the world. Listen via wavefarm
No Birds Land
Tamsin Grainger (UK 2021)
Tamsin Grainger (UK 2021)
6 min
Audio Walks for Armchair Listening Mini Series
If a bird could write a poem maybe it would sound like this?
This is the sound poem for No Birds Land, an art and sound installation in the Trinity Tunnel on the Edinburgh cycle path network.
Before and after entering the tunnel, the air is full of birdsong; inside there is little or none. This sound-art installation recognises that no birds land or alight there (although occasionally one flies through), that it is a sort of 'No Man's Land' for birds, though humans built the sandstone structure to transport goods and each other between Granton Harbour and the rest of the city.
Written and Performed by : Tamsin Grainger
XMTR Radio Hour Ep19 : Cities and Memory
Social Broadcasts (UK 2022)
Produced by Social Broadcasts / Cities and Memory (UK 2022)
60 min / Episode 19 of 19
An hour dedicated to Cites and Memory, one of the world’s largest sound projects, with more than 1,000 artists contributing to our goal of remixing the world, one sound at a time.
Every location on the Cities and Memory sound map features 2 sounds, the original field recording of that place and a reimagined sound that presents that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new. There are over 5,000 sounds featured on this sound map, spread over more than 100 countries and territories. We’ll visit a selection and keeping with the concept you will hear the original field recording of a place followed by a re-imagined piece.
Featuring:
1. Duet for breaking waves and the horizon by Cities and Memory (Caloura in the Azores)
2. Lockdown thunderstorm in Oxford by Cities and Memory (Oxford)
3. Chongqing Docks by Andy McDade (Chaotianmen Dock, Chongqing, South West China recorded by Ian MacArthur)
4. The loneliness of the late-night station by Cities and Memory (Berlin at Bellevue station recorded by Cristina Iscenco)
5. It’s not a wave it’s a river by Cristina Marras (Carlo Scarpa, Antivole Italy)
6.The Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo in Venice by de Velden (Venice, Italy)
7. Echoes by Bill Stevens (Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, New York, USA)
8 A recording of a story 'Alfons and the Magic Christmas Tree featured on HCJB’s DX Party Line hosted by Clayton Howard. Recorded by Paul Rawdon, courtesy of the Shortwave Radio Archive for the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio.
9 War on Hugs by Kid KinAn hour dedicated to Cites and Memory, one of the world’s largest sound projects, with more than 1,000 artists contributing to our goal of remixing the world, one sound at a time.
Cities and Memory is always open to submissions from field recordists, sound artists, musicians or anyone with an interest in exploring sound worldwide.
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The Letter S
Chris Brookes (CA 2001)
Chris Brookes (CA 2001)
54min
Whispers in the Air
On December 12th, 1901 Guigliermo Marconi received the world's first trans-Atlantic wireless signal on the cliff just above Chris Brook’s Battery Radio studio. Or... did he?
This beautifully poetic audio work combines fact and fiction, reality and construction to tell the story of the beginning of radio and sound waves. The perfect place to start for any budding audiofile.
Produced by Chris Brookes - Battery Radio
Created for the 2001 centenary of Marconi's transmission. First broadcast: ABC "Classic FM" Dec. 12, 2001.
Special Commendation, Prix Marulic 2002
Atlantic Journalism Award 2002
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)
You Only Guide Me By Surprise: Tape S-1-12
Landry Ayres US 2022)
Landry Ayres (US 2022)
20 min
Described as a suite of sonic somnambulism for those interested in poetry, peripety, magic or mystery. A guided meditation through committee or a dive into hypnosis through a clever plunderphonic escapade of 10 self help tapes from the 70's and 80's.
Producer: Landry Ayres
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Awful Grace: The Treachery Of Sounds
Champagne’s Electric US 2017)
The Champagne's Electric (US 2017)
32 min Episode 4 of 13
You’re never told what you’re hearing but through the sounds you have to piece together what it is that is happening. But is it correct? Have we been mislead? The haunting audio work still has me leaning in at the horror of what I’m hearing, a reality in real-time.
Awful Grace remains a mysterious and understated series of sound art, proving that a podcast can be whatever you want it to be.
Produced by The Champagne's Electric. Originally published for the podcast Awful Grace, or The Tolling of the Void Bell.
Listen to the whole series
Miss Time
Dinabird (FR/UK 2011)
Dinahbird (UK/FR 2011)
4 min
Miss Time, pays homage to the first speaking clocks born in the early 1930s, who were in fact telephone switchboard ladies, chosen for their fine elocution and stamina, who every 15 seconds, 240 times an hour, mechanically told the time to an invisible audience, regardless if anyone called or not. Each country had it's telephone diva, known for her golden voice and accurate timekeeping. Sadly these marathon performances fizzled out in the sixties when technology made these Time Ladies redundant.