Transmissions
XMTR Radio Hour Ep27: Earlid - Hubris and Humility with Joan Schuman
Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
60 min / Episode 27 of 27
This XMTR (Transmitter) Radio Hour is dedicated to Earlid a gallery of evolving exhibits of sound art. US based Earlid founder and curator and seasoned radio practitioner Joan Schuman talks through a selection of five audio works that come under the theme Hubris and Humility. Works featured are by Bassel, Meira Asher, Evangeline Riddiford Graham and Joan Schuman.
Works featured:
1. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it
Myra Al-Rahim aka Bassel, 2019
https://www.earlid.org/posts/cycles-of-atrocity/
2. Cicatrix
Joan Schuman, 2008
https://www.joanschuman.com/hyperacousia/posts/cicatrix
3. Still Sleeping
Meira Asher, 2016
https://www.earlid.org/posts/meira-asher-still-sleeping
4. Dog Woman: An Interview
Evangeline Riddiford Graham, 2020
https://www.earlid.org/posts/dog-woman
5. The Hitman
Joan Schuman 2021
https://www.joanschuman.com/hyperacousia/posts/how-you-treat-them-is-what-you-are
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
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Requiem For A Mother
Miri Berlin (DE 2023)
Miri Berlin (DE 2023)
9 min
This sound composition combines field recordings with electronic elements to document the acoustic and atmospheric character of various stages – from the intensive care unit to the vigil and on to the crematorium.
In the intensive care unit, the rhythmic sounds of the ventilator and the beeps of medical devices are the first things you hear. Afterward, we find ourselves in a Berlin courtyard where the casket, on a metal trolley, is transported from the mortuary to the room where the vigil takes place.
In the middle of the room, the casket is open. The door to the courtyard is ajar, allowing ambient sounds to permeate the space. The final stage is the crematorium, where the sounds of powerful ventilation fans and a relentless drone dominate. The furnace door opens with a loud mechanical sound as the casket glides on the rails. The fire becomes visible, hissing and crackling before the door quickly closes again.
Produced by: Miri Berlin
Ghost Wolf
Joan Schuman (US 2023)
Joan Schuman (US 2023)
13 min
The sovereignty of bodies is conjectured through a shuffle of voices across the scaffold of hollow spaces—the mouth, pelvis; curled fists and open heart.
These voices spin and blur into an invitation to listen beyond the exacting stories we find comfort in. Imagine the wolf, hunted almost to extinction across centuries in the U.S. and their ever-strident returns. We fear them as we conjecture dreamscapes from their howls.
These spectral creatures and their autonomous nations fiercely compel some communities to seek their annihilation; others strive for management.; some are satisfied in the certainty of their hidden slinking. It’s a mirror to contemporary political dogfights over bodily dominion, of conviction and control. In a poetic mix of voices, in the barely sung utterance, in barking and yipped snarls, there’s a swirl of imaginary wolves inside the body’s cavities.
There’s also an urgency to stray across landscapes of narrative around fears and survival. We contend with a tension of opposites. The same person who absolutely values the sovereignty of reproductive rights for women might be the person who falls easily to the sway of another faith—a solid belief in government control of disease and culture, bodies and politics, scientific literacy and objectivity.
Like the metaphor of unseen wolves, there is a trope of hysteria that is palpable depending on the bodies and the faith in them. Can these disparate stories about sovereignty be open to debate? Felt in the body itself? Formed in another kind of skulking, a striding low across the loamy, forest floor?
Written, vocalized and composed by:: Joan Schuman
XMTR Radio Hour Ep26 : Steve Urquhart's Audio World
Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
63 min / Episode 26 of 26
This Transmitter Radio Hour is a selection of audio works chosen by award winning Glasgow based radio producer and sound artist Steve Urquhart. He joins Lucia to discuss why these works inspire, make him laugh and more importantly break the rules and conventions of radio making. Steve has worked for local radio in Cumbria, National Prison Radio and made many many documentaries and shorts for BBC Radio.
Works featured:
1. LEAVING A MARK
Produced by Emily Hsaio for Transom Story Workshop, 2013
https://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/feature/leaving-a-mark
2. THE HOT DOGS
BBC Radio Cumbria, circa 1999/2000. Presenter: Alan Smith. Producer: Steve Urquhart
3. RABBLE ROUSERS (extract)
Produced by Sarah Boothroyd, 2012
https://soundcloud.com/sarah-boothroyd/boothroyd-rabble-rousers
4. PRISON WALK (unedited)
Recorded by Chris Impey inside HMP Brixton, London, 2011
5. LYN AND MARY (extract)
The Listening Project, BBC, 2013
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p6rz3
6. THE FURNITURE SUPPER CLUB
Produced by Clara Lou, 2017
https://www.claralou.net/work/the-furniture-supper-club
7. BUMP (from ‘Time Constraints AKA the 32Megabyte Mixtape’)
Produced by Alan Bryden, 2017
https://soundcloud.com/listentosteve/alan-bryden-bump-from-time-constraints
https://linktr.ee/alan_bryden
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
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Generative Engine
Joan Schuman (US 2022)
Joan Schuman (US 2022)
10 min
Sounds and stories, like dreams, elude our grasp towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished.
Along a series of voiced ‘book pages’ echoing from Joan’s creative sonic archive of more than 20 years ago, comes an intersection generated with material lifted up from the unconscious. Collisions of narrative are reconsidered along the timescape of dreams. It’s very much of the now and of a past that appears in the present. What is spoken and whirled emits a barely linear story accessing the cycles of death, but also the collective symbology of end-times and freedom.
This melding is driven by an energetic stirring of borrowed lines from the poet-theorist, Nicole Brossard, and the theorist-philosopher Gilles Deleuze—from texts produced in the early 1970s (A Book by Brossard and Negotiations by Deleuze). These ‘pages’ comprised a sonic engine originally played in a gallery space and ceded over to the machine’s shuffle mode. Now, in present time, both a past and a future unfurl. The ship of the night floats through turgid waters. A neat continuum of story is interrupted within itself swirling like an invertebrate, horizontal and regenerate. The underworld knows no time. Sounds, like dreams, elude our grasp towards a future deemed to be untouched, untarnished.
Vocals + mix: Joan Schuman
Texts + Words: Nicole Brossard + Gilles Deleuze
Composition: Joan Schuman derived from Creative Commons licensed freesound
In The Dark What’s New: Bedstuy Beats
Vivienne Schutz (DE 2023)
Vivienne Schutz (DE 2023)
1 min
Vivien Schütz is a German radio maker living in Brooklyn, New York. She typically produces radio documentaries and fictional stories for German public radio, but this was her first time experimenting with something non-narrated piece using only field recordings.
The piece was inspired by the prompt "What does your neighborhood sound like to you?". It’s called “Bedstuy Beats”. Bedstuy is short for Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, where Vivien has been living for the last two years. A lot of the recordings were spontaneous — she just grabbed her phone when something interesting was happening around her.
Produced by: Vivienne Schutz
In The Dark What’s New: Life Begins in the Stillness
Julie Censullo and Gabriel Rodreick (US 2023)
Julie Censullo and Gabriel Rodreick (US 2023)
10 min
Julie Censullo is an audio producer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Her piece, "Life Begins in the Stillness", was produced as part of the Spring 2023 In the Dark short feature course, and was featured on BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts. It’s Julie’s first non-narrated and heavily sound designed piece. It was recorded in the Quaking Bog in Theodore Wirth Regional Park in Minneapolis. The interviewee is a man named Gabriel Rodreick He is a musician and artist who goes by “Freaque”, and he created the bog spirits heard in the piece.
Produced by: Julie Censullo
Music by: Gabriel Rodreick, AKA "Freaque
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.