Transmissions
The Process: What Is Financial Astrology?
Alanna Chance (UK 2022)
Alanna Chance / Somerset House (UK 2022)
29 min Episode 2 of 6
We’re used to experiencing the work of an artist in its final form – in the gallery, on the stage, or mixed on an album. But what has been the journey to get there? Somerset Housemersethouse.org.uk/ is home to a community of over 70 artists and makers.
This series goes behind the scenes of the process that some of these artists go through to get to the finished work.
Gary Zhexi Zhang is an artist interested in exploring the chimeric edges of global systems. Recently his research has taken him into the world of finance, where he’s been drawn to the sorts of speculative ways of thinking we might normally associate with the occult. Enter Financial Astrology, a way of forecasting the markets based on the positions of the cosmos. In this episode of The Process, Gary goes down the rabbit hole to try to understand this field and grasp why cryptocurrency in particular is so obsessed with the stars. He hears about some seismic events on the horizon from Christeen Skinner, a financial astrologist who has been working in the City of London for over 20 years and talks to social anthropologist and former equity fund manager, Philip Grant about how ideas of magic and finance overlap.
Produced by Alannah Chance
Produced as part of the Creators-in-Residence Programme 2021
Supported by The Rothschild Foundation
Edgeland
Hayley Suviste (UK 2021)
Hayley Suviste (UK 2020)
24 min
As Manchester’s streets and skyline are warped by the ever-accelerating process of urban renewal, the city’s edgelands and green spaces are at risk of being swallowed by waves of property development. Not only does this raise questions about the ecology of the city, as carbon sinks are flattened and wildlife is displaced, but it speaks to broader trends pushing urban residents away from shared space, community and local identity.
This project shines a light on these spaces and the activists, academics, and local people who have taken up the daunting fight against corporate interests in the city in the name of biodiversity, urban ecology and community wellbeing. As we are faced with crises of both environment and mental health, the role of public green spaces has become ever more crucial in the eyes of those who enjoy, nurture, and maintain them
Hayley Suviste is a sound artist and composer based in Manchester (UK). She works with field recordings, archival material, electronic hardware, and live instrumentation to create long-form compositions, sonic installations, and multimedia art projects. Inspired by folk traditions and oral histories, Hayley is interested in the role of sound and voice in constructing and reproducing cultural identities and socio-historical narratives and how new compositional technologies can engage communities with overlooked stories about their environments.
Produced by Hayley Suviste
Commsioned by HCMF
Trade Winds: Ayurveda to Big Pharma: the Wonder of Healing Plants
Scrolls and Leaves (IN 2021)
Scrolls and Leaves (IN 2021)
33 min Episode 6 of 8 of Trade Winds
Trade Winds explores how movement and migration across the Indian Ocean changed us.
In a windswept mountain pass, more than a hundred years ago, a towering Afghan man hacks a Scottish trader to death. Then the killer disappears. A British officer is determined to track him down and rides along the old Silk Route into western China. No sign of the killer but he does encounter a book of Ayurveda unearthed in the nearby desert. The Sanskrit lettering details the power of Healing Plants.
Produced by Mary-Rose Abraham and Gayathri Vaidyanathan
Sound design by Nikhil Nagaraj
For Scrolls and Leaves
Listen to the series
Cities of Memory: Paris Dadaphone
Guillaume Loizillon (FR 2016)
Produced by Guillaume Loizillon (FR 2016)
11 min
Dada Sounds marks a century of Dadaism by applying the techniques and practices of Dada to field recordings from around the world, bringing a Dadaist approach to the concepts of sound, place and memory and creating a new, Dada-inspired sound world.
A trip through Paris’ streets with a Dada inspired soundscape.
Producer: Guillaume Loizillon
Part of the Cities of Memory Dada sounds series
Everyday People Show: Chipata, My Beautiful City ft. Mai Olivia Kamuna
Drc. Jaèy (GHAN 2021)
Drc. Jaèy, for the AMBC (GHAN 2021)
15 min / Episode 18 of 24 (Season 3)
The Everyday People Show is a lifestyle and autobiographical documentary podcast that tends to curate the best of African/Black experiences through stories and sound.
What comes to mind when you hear 'Zambia?' In this episode of the Everyday People Show, Mailesi Olivia Kamuna - Zambia based physiotherapist and Yoga instructor, shares her everyday story. She takes us through a journey of experience and presence of growing up and living in the beautiful city of Chipata, Zambia. She also shares her experiences of living in India for 5 years while studying in college, the culture shocks, the similarities and dissimilarities between the home of Bollywood and home of the Victoria Falls.
Submitted to XMTR
Produced by: Drc. Jaèy, for AMBC
La Cafetera
Labrador Basin (US 2021)
Produced by Labrador Basin (US 2021)
13 min, Episode 7 of 9
From somewhere you know, transmitted to you. Listen in, don’t tell anyone. As fantasy intoxicates reality, observation becomes drowned understanding.
The mysterious Labrador Basin combines field recording archive montage and poetry and with each episode we learn a little more about this allusive artist.
Producer: Labrador Basin
Listen to the series (In Spanish an English)
Submitted to XMTR
The Unfiltered History Tour - Hoa Hakananai'a
Vice World News (UK 2021)
Produced by Jesse Lawson For Vice World News (UK 2021)
15 min Episode 2 of 10
In school you learn about museums but you’re never taught to question how their collections ended up in their hands. According to many people, the British Museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods. VICE World News brings you the stories of ten of these objects, told to you by people from the countries they were taken from.
The people of Rapa Nui – also known as Easter Island – carved Hoa Hakananai’a centuries ago. This living ancestor was taken by British sailors and given to Queen Victoria.
Produced by Jesse Lawson
Research by Marthe Van Der Wolf
A VICE World News production
Listen to the series or Take the tour
Suspense : The Hitch-Hiker
Suspense The Hitch-Hiker (US 1942)
Mercury Theater (US 1942)
29 min Episode 45 of 52
The Audio equivalent of a black and white matinée film, narrated by a young Orson Welles. (Citizen Kane) We are pulled in with the question; Who doesn't like a good ghost story? No blood or gore, just a shocker, a thriller, a real Orson Wells story. Sometimes you want your heart to be warmed and sometime you want your spine to tingle.
Wells plays the protagonist Ronald Adams who comes across a mysterious hitchhiker as he drives across the States in his Buick. This radio play takes the listener to another era but the production is so good - and to think this was all done live!
There’s even a Patreon style plea at the end to Mrs and Mrs American working man and woman to lend Uncle Sam a dime to help win the war against the Nazis. It’s revelatory.
And if you’e never heard the original War of the Worlds by H G Wells, it’s really worth a listen (Also produced by the Mercury Theatre)
Produced and Directed by William Sphere
Scored by Bernard Herman
Narrated by Orson Welles
Produced for The Mercury Thearter
Listen to the series
XMTR Radio Hour Ep16
Social Broadcasts (UK 2022)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2021)
60 min / Episode 16 of 16
The next hour has a distinctly European flavour and will be showcasing work from the Italian radio platform Radio Papesse, the Belgian space for sonic creations RadioLa as well something from the prolific Italian multi-media artist Cristina Marras and a short from the Social Broadcast archive.
Sound artist Anna Raimondo has four languages in her life, French, Italian, Spanish and English and decided that it would be sensible to get some phonetic training to help her achieve a proper British accent. Her Henry Higgins happens to be Australian and the results teeter between absurd and endearing. Me My
English and all the languages of my life by Anna Raimondo
From Radiola.be (by the Atelier de creation sonore radiophonique in Brussels)
Next, we’re going to take a sort of road trip in Sardinia along the St Barbara Mining trail but also on a personal trip down a memory lane belonging to Italian radio maker Cristina Marras’s memories as she goes on this 500k pilgrimage with her friend who is happens to be called Cristina Maras.
The smell of Naptha by Cristina Marras
Back to the UK now to Peterborough and more specifically to the Portuguese area just off the Lincoln road, where Francesco Costa is having an after-work glass of wine at Tasca, a Portuguese canteen complete with football on the TV and cakes and stews behind glass counter.
Love and Life on Lincoln Road - Francesco Costa by Lucia Scazzocchio
From Radio Local
Now Imagine a camera zooming out up from Lincoln road, up from Peterborough, up from Britain, Europe, the earth and now we can see earth from space. But then we hurtle down towards Alabama in the US, it’s 1954 and a Meteor hits.
Meteor Bodies by Kate Donovan with mentorship from Katharina Metts
From Radio Papesse’s Lucia Festival
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City Of Women - Dicks
Vaaka (IN 2019)
Produced by Radhika Viswanathan and Samyuktha Varma (IN 2019)
22 min Episode 2 of 14
How often have you been walking down the street, running an errand or riding the bus when you see something… and you do a double take. Your eyes keep going back to it and your brain goes into overdrive: ‘IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS?’ Yes, it’s EXACTLY what you think it is. Long before we got unsolicited dick picks in our DMs and inboxes, we got them unsolicited irl. In ‘Dicks’ we talk to women about the whats, whens and hows of all those dicks.
City of Women, explores the calculated strategies, backdoor negotiations, and often absurd lengths women go to have fun and feel free in their city. Universal experiences told from an Indian woman’s perspective. A fun, complex, joyride into the minds of women and the streets of Bangalore.