Transmissions
In The Dark Bristol: Creatures of the Rave
Eve Piper (UK 2021)
Eve Piper (UK 2021)
10 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
Creatures of the Rave is a poem about the temptation, atmosphere and thrill of underground raves. It is a first-person narrative account following the arc of one night’s raving, the anticipation beforehand, the rush at its peak and the come down of its closure. The poem aims to uncover what happens at an illegal rave, an unregulated intervention into often discarded public space that can somehow simultaneously be a thing of stigma and status. Eva worked with producers and sound designers to create an immersive drum & bass soundscape to accompany my poem.
Produced by Eva Piper
In The Dark Bristol: The Radio Limbo Creation Story
Pete Hazell (UK 2022)
Pete Hazell (UK 2022)
5 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
A collage piece playing with the contrast between the idea of Godly creation and the often overbearing presence of commercial materialism.
As well as highlighting the absurdity of radio advertising and outdated children’s records, the purpose is simply to promote the radio show's identity and its sense of humour. It concludes with an example of the 7th day being intended for rest, with a reimagined old time radio drama about listening to a broken radio on a Sunday, which in itself contains subversive messages and frustration.
Pete Hazell is a music and radio producer from Bristol, founder of the cassette label Limbo Tapes and host of Radio Limbo.
Producer: Pete Hazel
In The Dark Bristol: Life Partners
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
Christina Hardinge (UK 2022)
10 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
What happens when we reframe the relationship to our body as a life partnership?
Life Partners is an immersive unscripted story that brings this question to life, as Hania Fares recounts the highs and lows of her 32-year relationship to 'Bea'.
The piece is inspired by counselling/psychotherapy techniques that ‘bring to life’ trauma through characterisation, adapted by the producer into a device for documentary storytelling after her own experiences of working with this therapeutic process.
Christina Hardinge is an award-winning audio producer, filmmaker and artist working creatively in the field of documentary.
Her work has won the Charles Parker Prize and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Christina Hardings
In The Dark Bristol: Hidden In The Hills
Chris Baker (UK 2020)
Chris Baker (UK 2020)
5 min
The physical distance between Cornish houses can stretch out for many miles, and public transport between them is typically infrequent and overpriced. In many parts of Cornwall, internet access is still slow, and in some places, un-obtainable. Whilst this can be a nuisance for many adults, it can be incredibly detrimental to the lives of young people. Without the proximity of support and services, the future of this country is quickly becoming hidden in the hills.
Young people selected from different communities across Cornwall were interviewed about their experiences of isolation. These interviews have been brought together to form one shared story. Recordings from the Cornish countryside were also embedded alongside other sounds to try and create a more immersive experience.
Created by British composer and sound designer Chris Baker, this audio work is a combination of sound and speaking. ‘Hidden in the Hills’ is a sonic painting that aims to be both creative and inventive, whilst also relevant to modern Britain.
Produced by Chris Baker
In The Dark Bristol: Rewinding Time - Connecting Through Cassette
Alfie Skinner (UK 2022)
Alfie Skinner (UK 2021)
11 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
A social history documentary bringing the 19-year-old Producer closer to finding out what his parents were like when they were his own age.
Going through their boxes of old records and cassettes, Alfie discovers long-treasured taped voice recordings, made by his Mum and Dad for each other in 1996.
Alfie’s parents met when his Dad was 19 and his Mum was 18. Just months after getting together, they were geographically separated, when his Mum went to teach at a school in the rural areas of Zimbabwe on her Gap Year, leaving his Dad back in Bristol.
The village where Alfie’s Mum was staying was really cut off - with no electricity, running water or phone-lines. Without being able to call or email, to stay connected, his parents’ recorded spoken letters for each other on cassette tapes and sent them by post, never imagining that anyone else would be listening to them 25 years later!
Curious about the technology that Alfie’s parents used to keep in touch, he and his girlfriend use isolation in lockdown to experiment with making their own tapes to communicate with each other.
Despite his excruciating embarrassment at having to listen to his parent’s recorded love letters to make the programme, Alfie comes to realise the important role that the tapes played in their relationship and, in a way, if they didn’t exist, then he might not either!
Produced by Alfie Skinner
The Last Bohemians LA: Gloria Hendry
Kate Hutchinson (UK 2022)
Kate Hutchinson (UK 2022)
32min Episode 2 of 8
The Last Bohemians meets maverick and radical women in arts and culture and takes listeners on a vivid, hallucinatory trip through their extraordinary lives. From subversive musicians and style icons to game-changing artists, these are women who have lived life on the edge and who still refuse to play by the rules.
Lost and feeling adrift during the pandemic, host and creator Kate Hutchinson decamped from London to Hollywood in search of the wildest women in the City of Angels to help her get her mojo back. From Sunset Strip sexpots to Downtown artists, she meets a range of incredible women – and one artistic dynasty! – among the palm trees and bougainvillaea to glean some much-needed advice.
In this episode we meet Gloria Hendry. She made film history with Live and Let Die, becoming Bond's first Black love interest, and took on edgy roles in what were known as the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. She talks about being a trailblazer, raunchy sex scenes, what being a Playboy Bunny taught her about life and how she paved the way for Black women in film.
Her voice is infectious and she describes in her down to earth way how she navigated Black civil rights, feminism, being part of ‘Black Renaissance’ movies and how to navigate being a woman of colour in the entertainment business. Her motto ‘it doesn’t matter what you think of me, I can’t do anything about it’
Produced by Kate Hutchinson
www.thelastbohemians.co.uk
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
Harness Your Hopes: Ola Owodunni reads ’A Road Often Travelled’
Alan Meaney (2022)
Alan Meaney (IE 2022)
30 min Episode 5 of 6
Harness Your Hopes is a series of 6 podcasts investigating and showcasing fiction. Six of the West of Ireland’s upcoming authors have written a new short story inspired by the theme of ‘harness your hopes’. In each episode the author reads the story and then speaks with the presenter about their craft and inspiration and how the theme inspired them. The aim of the programme is to place the listener at the heart of the artist’s creative process, while finding common ground and some positivity in these difficult times.
Ola Owodunni reads her story 'A Road Often Travelled'. She discusses how the story is based on the life of a friend of hers, the struggles that people in Direct Provision face and the hope in both the story and in life for asylum seekers.
Written and read by Ola Owodumni
Produced by Allan Meaney
Eliza: A Robot Story
Ella Watts / Emma Hickman (UK 2022)
Crowd Network / Ella Watts (UK 2022)
47 min Episode 1 of 4
A dark, near-future science fiction fairytale about a robot who can feel, and the world that attempts to control her. When a robot called Eliza falls in love with Him, they work together to make her fully sentient. But consciousness doesn’t come without consequences. As Eliza gets caught in a web of both loving and abusive relationships, she has to fight to survive.
This all female production explores age-old fantasies about sentient AI and female robots becoming more than they are programmed to be. Unlike ‘Her’ or ‘Bladerunner’ this is from the robot Eliza’s perspective as she analyses the humans around her, especially ‘Him’
Eliza: Tanya Reynolds , Him: Arthur Darvill, Her: Dominique Tipper
Additional Voices: Sarah Griffin and Tom Crowley
Writer: Emma Hickman
Director and Producer: Ella Watts
Sound Design and Mixing / Mastering: Alexis Adimora
A Crowd Network original made in partnership with The Pankhurst Trust / Manchester Women’s Aid
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.