artists and works _FM exhibition

HAK Lo-Fi Record collective / Denis McCarty, Anton Mobin & Ayato (France)
Lost Frequencies(24’15’’)

Lost Frequencies is a sound art composition that started with a project called Bye Bye FM. Bye Bye FM responded to a political announcement that threatened to cancel the small and free radio stations in France. The collective H.A.K. began recording AM and FM commercial French radio stations. All radio sources were collected through a common sound bank and traded by email. All of the short sequences were placed sequentially, one after the other, to assemble the 24-minute composition. The work transcends the actual moment when one media that changed the communicational paradigm of the 20th century becomes abandoned. The historical moment is trapped in the original frequencies the work is made of. Dramatic interpretation incorporating irony, hidden criticism and conceptual phrasing are opening before us the galaxy of the perhaps soon-to-be dead FM.

Kabir Carter (USA)
Fill (10’00’’)

A small handheld radio receiver’s tuning dial is swept and held at its designed limit. Nearly outband frequency signals, when observed, yield frequency clusters that are relayed as a continuous sound inserted in between air chain and receiver.

Automating (Australia)
DePreston – Dedicated to Ambulance Victoria (7’00’’)
“I came to Germany as part of my Sound Art studies in Australia (in Germany it is called ‘Neue Music’). I quickly found out that my scrambled crash course in the language was woefully insufficient, and also that the course didn’t have nearly as much English as I had expected. In addition to the problem of basic communication, it became apparent that I was the only student in the institution not fluent in musical notation. So far homesickness hadn’t presented as much of a problem as the general disconnection from the shared social experience. During Easter, while listening to the radio, I came across a site, which was streaming emergency service radio from Melbourne. A taste of home in the most unexpected form! While I was at my home on a sunny Spring day in Hannover, it was the middle of the night on a very long weekend in Melbourne. Overdoses, stabbings, pub fights, all detailed through a series of transmissions by people with one of the hardest jobs in the world, and most importantly in the accent I’ve taken for granted for the last quarter of a century. By putting it in contrast with the German professional and amateur radio from analogue and digital transmissions perhaps some sense of the culture shock can be felt.” (Automating)

Emiliano Zelada (Italy)
The Solemn Geographies of Our Limits (2’30’’)

The work is centered on language and its geographical implications and communication effects. The work “introduces” members of two different groups of wolves – one from North America and one from the Arabian Peninsula – into the European continent. The sounds made by wolves are very similar for all 39 species of canis lupus in all continents and its use, according to behavior, is identical throughout. The act of introducing other species in a geographically new location, as seen from a human point of view, it’s not very different from finding oneself in an unknown place – for instance, being an immigrant. In any given territory the newly introduced wolves, would be dealt with by the local packs using the same communication parameters, thus breaking any geographical frontier.Original principles of human society’s structures are similar to wolves’ behavioral laws (inside aspect) within a broader geographical territory (outside aspect)…

Henry Gwiazda (USA)
Claudia and Paul 2:13 a. m. audio version 2008 (7’43’’)

Claudia and Paul 2:13 a. m. audio version is an audio version of a new media work by the same name. “I wanted to observe the effect of translating a visual/aural work into a purely sound version. More sounds were added as well as the presence of a narrator. A man is looking and listening from his window, observing the choreography at the crossroads below him…My work is about the choreography of reality. It’s about the way everything moves and is interconnected to create beauty. Each small, choreographed scene can be appreciated for itself, but on subsequent viewings, takes on a separate meaning. They become metaphors for our lives, our dreams and us.

Steve Bradley (USA)
FAB 187 (12’07’’)

FAB 187 is a work that documents a building air space that I have worked in over the past 15+ years. In 2008 I started recording the sounds of the building beginning with the internal physical sounds, then recently the electromagnetic radio WAVes that the building produces – data flow channels, lighting and other electronic and electrical producing devices in the structure. Also, during this period, I recorded short WAVe and other radio signals that are apparent broadcasts surrounding the location.

Andrea Polli
Soundwalking Sonification and Activism (34’15’’)

Brendan Baylor 
Iowa River: Ideology/Function (7’36’’)

This project started when I attempted to do a series of field recordings on the Iowa River in the midwestern US. I planned to gather some vaguely naturalistic sounds: water flowing, insects, the wind through the trees; instead I harvested a set of much more industrial sounds: water pumps, trains, planes, cars. This sound piece is an investigation of the ways in which human activities have altered the area around the Iowa River though it’s use in transportation, agriculture, energy production, and manufacturing. I’m interested in how the river, which we consider a “natural” thing is implicated in the highly artificial systems of production of our global economy. These sounds are specific, in the sense that they are from a specific spot on the Iowa River, and yet they could happen almost anywhere on earth where trains, rivers, airplanes, hydroelectric dams, and cars intersect the same space. These are the sounds of industry overwhelming and subsuming the much more organic sounds of water, air, and insects.

Radio Cegeste (Nueva Zelanda)
 The transit of venus, study for shortwave 1 (7:52)

During a six week artist residency on kapiti island, a nature reserve 3 miles of the new zealand coast, i explored radio transmission and reception as a way of reading the materiality of environmental signal, via mediums such as VLF receivers and mini FM. On one day, the 9th may 2012, i took a multi-band radio receiver once used as a maritime communication device into three very different environments, and recorded this device tuning in to signals on the shortwave band on the shores of a lagoon, in a grassy field, and at the site of a demolished lighthouse on the shoreline. it was bracing outside, cold and windy, with periodic drizzly rain, and the seas were booming and fierce. the shortwave band was largely emptied out of content, but occasionally transmissions, like distant missives from some small, forgotten, decades- old event still circulating in the airwaves like an aetheric ghost, became audible through the static and sine. with the 2012 transit of venus almost upon us, i couldn’t help but reflect on the possibility of tuning into the electromagnetic emissions of planetary events, and also the ways in which astronomical way-finding and scientific practice were crucial parts of the histories of these islands, with the sighting of aotearoa/new Zealand by captain james cook’s crew aboard the endeavour being a side effect of their mission to observe the 1769 transit of venus. prior to this I had been gathering information on the shipwrecks recorded on kapiti between first-contact and the time it became a nature reserve in 1897, and also investigating the wayfinding histories of the Polynesian navigators who used the stars, the flight paths of birds, and various map constructions as transmission devices to find it much earlier still. ‘the transit of venus, study for shortwave 1’ is the first of the three pieces made from these three recordings.

Ronald Coulter (Estados Unidos)
Ea(i)r TesT (6’22’)

Ea(i)r TesT is created from four field recordings and two radio recordings. The field recordings include: a soccer match, a protest, a distant train, and a café. Here the sounds become dislocated from their original space-time and relocated in a newly created space-time creating an unreal from the real and recapitulating to the real or at least imagined in audition. Minimal processing of the sounds is used, only simple manipulation such as volume, panning, reverb, equalization are used on the source material. The composition deals with questions of place, time, and the culmination of these concepts via sound as presence; additionally questions of the human impact and intrusion on our sonic environment.

Valentina Villarroel Ambiado (Chile)
Environment (6’22’)

Recording of urban sounds in different pools that are part of places in the city of Concepcion. These audios were processed in the broadest sense altering the characteristics of sounds collected during actions in the public space. The processing consisted alter the volume or amplitude of the signal, alter the frequency spectrum used in the variable time delay, modify the waveforms and saturate the audio signal. Later these records were manipulated and edited, randomly changing its parameters to generate a sound so different or modified using synthesizers and audio programs. In creating audio effects used different techniques, digital signal processing, such as variable delays, reberb.

Yair López (México)
Diagonal (6’00’’)

It is the result of my sound drifts by some parts of the city of Guadalajara and through radio stations captured in the large local quadrant. Contains a sample of how to hear the city: its radio stations, places I like, I feel terror, and in that way he had always wanted to be. Sounds herein was captured in the city of Guadalajara, Mexico after walking sound, public space interventions.
Find markets, religious protests and the life of a popular area of the city. As well as radio recordings for me represent the city itself.

Zahra Mani (London-Pakistan)
Placese, Traces oder ortlose Orte, spurlose Spuren (11’58’’)

A personal journey through Pakistan and the UK (my homelands) and Austria and Croatia (where I have lived for the past 12 years).Nature, composition, sound and radio space come together in a stereo mix that carries the sonic spaces to the listener, celebrating the direct intimacy of radio as a medium in a highly personal sound piece.

Aki Onda (Japan/ USA)
First Thought Best Thought  (14’46’’)

“This is my first-ever cassette recording, made in Morocco in December 1988. I was living in Brixton, South London at that time and bought a Sony Walkman at a market before leaving for Morocco. As soon as I arrived in Marrakech, I was fascinated by the city’s exotic soundscape and wanted to record it since I had the brand new toy. My ears were also attracted by Moroccan traditional and modern pop music, which you could hear through radios, and street musicians playing. I remember music was everywhere in Moroccan people’s lives.

Then, I travelled to Tangier by bus. I wanted to go there because I was attracted by the history of bohemian life of the city – Paul & Jane Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg and Francis Bacon. I was twenty-one Years old. Just dreaming and longing for that sort of life myself. I recorded total three tapes during my visit to Morocco. However, I lost one of those and another one broke a long time ago. This is the only cassette recording that survived until now.” (Aki Onda)

Agnieszka Waligorska (Poland) and Pekka Siren (Finland)
Azunal (11’30’’)

Azunal reflects our sonic memories of a small flooded village of Lanuza near the French border in the Spanish Basque country. It is dedicated to the village-flooded beacuse of a water company’s disregard for safety regulations during a dam construction in the surrounding mountains.

Danel Premec (BIH)
It is Time for Alert 2012

The sound installation It Is Time For Alert has been created as a response to the overall situation in our country that negatively reflects on our culture and high-ranking cultural institutions, thereby initiating a loss of our cultural identity. By sounding sirens placed on the facade of the Art Gallery for 30 minutes, I want to warn the citizens that the current situation in our country is alarming.

Brane Zorman (SLO)
ERDE Unten Berlin 2012

The Propagations (USA)
The Bangalore Blowtorch (5’25’’)

The Bangalore Blowtorch fuses three of the signature sounds heard on the shortwave spectrum, distant music mutated by ionospheric propagation, data pulses and naturally occurring noise, shaped live using the filtering, and pass band controls of the Drake R8b communications receiver by The Propagations, David Goren and Ned Sublette. The recordings were taken from a live performance at The Tuning Lab in Flatbush, Brooklyn in February 2007, and mixed by David Goren in August 2011.

Mario Verandi (Argentina)
Street Markets Remixed (41’30’’)

Street Markets Remixed brings to life a whole pallet of cultural patterns in the form of sound art. It is a unique work of art, observing in depth social exchange in the one and only place where national identity is intact – markets. The work title refers to the music style and technique that inspired both the concept and the main approach used for treatment of the sound materials. As a cultural practice, a remix is a second mix of something that already exists and, in this case, it is founded in anthropology. The composition process focused mainly on the deconstruction and re-arrangement of the many vocal utterances produced by different stallholders. This kaleidoscopic conglomeration of voices gave birth to a fictional street market that is beyond the reality found in the original recordings. The piece includes recordings made in street markets in Berlin, Sao Paulo, Catania (Sicily), Peking and Tel-Aviv. The dramaturgy of the piece is built upon interplay between vocal textures, rhythmic structures and musical passages.

Snoring by Numbers(60:00) – 2013
Jean-Philippe Renoult & DinahBird (FR)

An hour long international sonic survey of snores, grunts, dribbling and whatever else we do as we slumber the night away. Recorded all over the world, from Paris to Tasmania, Copenhagen to Italy. Whilst the snores rumble on two men count their way from zero to six hundred and sixty six in alphabetical order. It Inspired by the French artist Claude Closky’s text work, 1000, and read by Hervé Binet and Robert Hampson. Snores have been recuperated and donated by the following people: Valérie Vivancos, Julia Drouhin, Ward Weis, Etienne Noiseau, Carlo Giordani, JP Renoult, Rodolphe Alexis and Marianne Decoster-Taivalkoski.
Bio: Jean-Philippe Renoult is a writer, radio producer and sound artist based in Paris. DinahBird is a radio artist also living and working in Paris. Recent collaborations include Topographies Nocturnes, a radio art project which was awarded the prestigious Prix Luc Ferrari and Dakar Morning Birds, a radio installation that transposed the dawn chorus of the Senegalese capital to an inner city garden in Northern Paris. www.radio1001.org   www.jeanphilipperenoult.com

city_sound_a_sleep (20:08) – 2002
tobias c. van Veen  (CA)

…and what if, at night, in the dark, when no one suspects, the quiet, west-coast air of the Pacific NorthWest sneaks a peak at lovers, arms gently touching, bodies sweaty with salt from the open sea and the Nordic mountains, dew from green forests and grime from the asphalt of Broadway, and what if, we might ask, at night, in the dark, when no one suspects, two suspects wander the streets, eyes shut and ears awake, seeking the sounds of the city sleeping, and who would suspect, at night, in the dark, this city to be Vancouver?
Bio:[tobias c. van Veen], b. 1978, explores sound, machines and turntables through installation and performance. Since 1993 he has explored conceptual and sound-art events, online interventions and radio broadcasts, working with festivals and galleries worldwide. http://quadrantcrossing.org

Night Lights(10:00)  – 2013-2014
Jonny Farrow (US)

The suns go down and the lights come up on Planet Abu. It’s not a foreign place, but I am a foreigner. Sound envelopes me. I lose myself, and my body navigates between the radioactive bodies in the sky, ephemeral bodies in the radio-sphere, and terrestrial bodies on the surface.
Bio:Jonny Farrow is an artist working with sound at the intersection of sculpture, transmission, and drawing.He is currently based in Abu Dhabi, UAE. www.jonnyfarrow.net

Part First: An Uncertain Distance(8:17)  – 2010
Simon Whetham (UK)

In February 2010, Simon Whetham was invited to perform at Audio Art in Krakow. The resulting work Prayers Unheard was created as a site-specific work for Audio Art in Krakow in February 2010, of which we present the first part An Uncertain Distance. Whetham was staying in the Kazimierz area of Krakow, the old Jewish area that during the Second World War became a ghetto through Nazi persecution. Walking the streets, mainly at night, he felt a certain sadness and longing that was almost tangible. The buildings, the very fabric of the city there, had to bear witness to the atrocities of that time.…The complete work is currently available in high-quality download fromhttp://www.dragonseyerecordings.com/catalogue/de5032.html
bio:Over the past eight years Simon Whetham has developed a practice of working with sound recordings as a raw material for composition. These are often environmental sounds he has captured employing a variety of methods and techniques, in order to obtain discreet or obscured sonic phenomena.
www.simonwhetham.co.uk

Maria Papadomanolaki: Sensing Cities – 2013 (2 x 30:00)

Sensing Cities is a blog space and a radio show. It investigates the themes of urban exploration and narrative through the use of sound, writing and new media art. It aims to create an initial understanding of the processes behind artists, writers and specific projects and to raise questions about  perceiving, creating and narrating place, be that fictional, real, internal or external. Sensing Cities brings together different creative approaches that engage with personal or collective memory and history, transience, listening, recording, sensing, voice, words, walking and locative art. (Ep 9.Ian Rawes London Sound Survey and Ep.1 Viv Copringham)  http://sensingcities.wordpress.com/

 

___________________________ LONG FORM WORKS FOR OVERNIGHT:

 Shadow Machine: The Granaries January 13, 1990
(generator version 2000/2010)indefinite length
 Absolute Value of Noise (CA)

The sounds for this piece were recorded at the granaries at the foot of Campbell Avenue in Vancouver, Canada, at 2:30 am, January 13th, 1990. The granaries at that time were an open structure of silos – two rows of five silos per side, with a rectangular cement super structure up top moulded around the silos and looking like some dilapidated, abandoned, post apocalyptic hotel. The sound in that place was intense – the hiss of air-valves releasing pressure from pneumatic systems, the ground trembling with the motion of huge conveyor belts, and the higher pitched buzzing of noisy sodium lamps. Around everything was a cloud of sea gulls swooping and fighting over the spillage. It was part of the night-scape of the city, but it also seemed miles away from civilization with no housing, or shops, or human-scale buildings anywhere nearby.
Bio:Peter Courtemanche aka Absolute Value of Noise is a contemporary sound and installation artist from Vancouver. He creates radio, installations, network projects, performances, curatorial projects, and handmade CD editions. His art works often have a literary basis – inspired by narrative texts and the history of specific installation sites. His work has shown across Canada and in Europe.

 Waves Array (4:00:00)  – 2009
Stéphane Claude (QC/CA)

Waves Array is a four hour real-time recording session / performance, a sound piece for the airwaves, originally curated by Emmanuel Madan for the series Simulcast 2.0, 2009. It combines a Blumlein stereo recording of an empty room with real-time sound synthesis and short-wave manipulations. These wave elements, living on their own and colliding with one another, are mixed and assembled into a vertical compositional structure with minimal intervention on the part of the composer.
Bio:Electronic/electroacoustic musician, audio mastering engineer.His research is concerned with providing a conceptual framework for audio recordings, the presentation of electronic art, and advancing the notion of “active listening.” As an audio consultant, he has participated in the conception, production and integration of high-end surround sound and digital recording and mastering studios in Montréal and abroad. He is cofounder of the artistic research cell Æ with artist Gisèle Trudel. www.aelab.com

Passages, from the series Transparences (4:00:00)  – 2009
Mario Gauthier (QC/CA) 

Transparences is a series of long-form pieces for overnight broadcast, originally curated by Emmanuel Madan for the radio series Simulcast 2.0 in 2009. Passages is inspired by a single idea: that despite appearances and regardless of context, nothing is ever completely immobile. Even though the piece is derived from a single sound, that sound is itself not neutral. It is always accompanied, augmented, or contaminated: a ray of night, an accidental incursion, the listening environment, the effect on the listener, etc. Paul Valéry writes that “While there is conscious variation of thought, no variation of reality,” [Notebook 1, p. 256]  but the opposite is also true.
Bio: Mario Gauthier is a musicologist, radio producer, composer, writer. He created radio for nearly twenty years at Radio-Canada’s now defunct Chaîne culterelle and was awarded an Opus prize in 2001 for the creativity and originality of his work. His sound creation work takes place in contexts ranging from festivals and concerts to artist residencies. He is active in archive restoration, presents talks and discussions, tinkers with electronic gadgets, is currently composing a radio work about the voice and writing a book about phonography.

Now You Listen To Me (2013-2014) indefinite length
Stephen Germana (US)

This is a variation of the solo piece, for guitar, radio and computer. In a performance of Now I Listen To You, I use a computer program of my own design to sample live radio and build a dialogue with an electric guitar. For Now You Listen To Me, I will use that computer program to sample my own improvisations (guitar, voice, other) in a generative manner suitable for indefinite duration for broadcast on live radio. Using guitar feedback and radio broadcasts as material, along with uniquely designed digital processing tools, directly relates to the ubiquitous sound of electricity humming around all environments we touch.
Bio: Stephen Germana is a Chicago based experimental musician and sculptor. He makes sounds, images and objects using a combination of computer facilitated complex systems, free improvisation and noise with the intention, at least one intention, of a contemplation of complexity. http://www.stephengermana.com/

  • radioCona:StoryscapesSE

    FM sound art exhibition, live from Ljubljana, Slovenia

    LIVE STREAM:
    Sat 18 - Thur 23 Jan 2020, each day 6.33PM - 11.30PM (CET / UTC+1)
    direct stream link:
    http://tmp.si:8000/radiocona.ogg


    Live StreamLIVE STREAM

  • radioCona, produced by CONA, launched in 2008, is a platform that uses the radio frequency space in art contexts. FM frequency is understood as public space, explored from different perspectives and mediated through artworks audiobooks, programming and exhibitions. radioCona is intervention into public space.