Welcome to "The Radio Art Hour," a show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio. "The Radio Art Hour" draws from the Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive, an online resource that aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks made by artists around the world, created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or independent transmission. Come on a journey with us as radio artists explore broadcast radio space through poetic resuscitations and playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers in this hour of radio about radio as an art form. "The Radio Art Hour" features introductions from Philip Grant and Tom Roe, and from Wave Farm Radio Art Fellows Karen Werner and Jess Speer. The Conet Project's recordings of numbers radio stations serve as interstitial sounds. Go to wavefarm.org for more information about "The Radio Art Hour" and Wave Farm's Radio Art Archive.
This week: First, "Mediterraneo," by Anna Raimondo. Introduced by Karen Werner. This piece packs a wallop as a form of witness and all the more so in its spare approach. Anna Raimondo produced "Mediterraneo" in 2014 as both a radio artwork and video installation. Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow Karen Werner. Second, "The Piano Tuning" by Chantal Dumas (2010). Introduced by Karen Werner. "The Piano Tuning" by Quebecois radio artist Chantal Dumas is a sonically delicious experience of and meditation on listening and sound in space. Chantal Dumas produced "The Piano Tuning" for German radio in 2010. The Quebec audio arts centre Avatar has created an online solo exhibition of Chantal Dumas radio work, worth checking out at http://avatarquebec.org/en/projects/residency-chantal-dumas/. Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner. Finally, New Zealand-based radio artist Sally Ann McIntyre created "three variations on a study for a data deficient species (grey ghost transmission)" in 2017. The piece focuses on a New Zealand bird species, the South Island kkako, which may or may not be extinct, no one knows for sure. The bird species was nicknamed the grey ghost for its hauntingly beautiful, mournful, slow, loud song. The only existing recordings of the kkako, included in the piece, are fragmentary and elusive--more of an absence than a presence. McIntyre writes, In these recordings, the bird hovers on the edge of audibility, refusing to be pinned down to monumental extinction narratives, just as it destabilizes...imperial ecology, by remaining outside Western scientific forms of knowing which rely on the verification of empirical evidence. The piece includes a musical score based on written documentation of the kkakos song as described in private letters and publications. This score is performed on piano, violin, clavichord and harpsichord. Another notable element of the piece is Maori musician Rob Thorne improvising on traditional instruments. He does a call-and-response to a field recording I sent him of the data deficient birds endangered cousin, the North Island kkako, which I made on the bird sanctuary Kapiti Island. My recording remains inaudible in the final piece, making Robs haunting playing of the traditional instrument a space in which only the ghosts of the missing bird are left to respond.
Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. A pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre, Wave Farm programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. Major activities include the Wave Farm Artist Residency Program; Transmission Art Archive; WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears, a creative community radio station based in New Yorks Upper Hudson Valley; a Fiscal Sponsorship program; and the Media Arts Assistance Fund in partnership with NYSCA Electronic Media/Film. Each episode of this series is evergreen. Episode 023. THIS SHOW IS EVERGREEN.
Anna Raimondo, Chantal Dumas, Sally Ann McIntyre
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:58:16
1
July 8, 2021
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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