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, Andy Stuhl, 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.
Today we tune in a legendary radio art work, a classical composition, and three pop songs, on the theme of the Devil's Radio. The radio art work is from Nicholas Collins, and it is his "Devil's Music" that uses live AM, FM, shortwave, and scanner transmissions to create "a jittery mix of shards of music, speech and radio noise." Also tune in for Donato Cabrera's take on composer Mason Bates "Devil's Radio," on the theme of Rumor is the Devils radio. George Harrison's "Devil's Radio" is similar in theme, while Robyn Hitchcock's "Devil's Radio" attacks talk radio hosts, and Eugene Chadbourne's "The Devil on the Radio" posits that Beelzebub does not just appear on the AM and FM bands, but also uses a CB radio. But "Devil's Music" is the centerpiece here, with Collins writing, "Devils Music is a performance piece about global media, local culture and individual interference. It developed in 1985 out of the confluence of my fascination with early Hip Hop DJs, a Cagean love of the splendor of radio, the introduction of the first affordable, portable samplers (Electro-Harmonixs 16 Second Digital Delay and Super Replay), and a simple home-made 'stuttering circuit' (inspired, perhaps, by my years as a student of Alvin Lucier.) In 'Devils Music' the performer sweeps the radio dial in search of suitable material, which is sampled in snippets of one second or less. These are then looped, layered and de-tuned. The stuttering circuit 're-rhythmitizes' the samples by retriggering and reversing the loops in response to accents in the rhythm of the ongoing (but usually unheard) flow of signal out of the radio " in other words, the radio material you dont hear is always governing the phrasing of the sounds you do hear, defeating the annoying periodicity of digital loops. The brevity of the samples is disguised by this constant shifting of the start and end points of the loop " a thrifty solution to the high cost of memory. All sounds are taken from transmissions occurring in the AM, FM, shortwave, and scanner bands at the time of the performance; no samples are prepared in advance. The result is a jittery mix of shards of music, speech and radio noise -- sometimes phasing languidly, sometimes driving rhythmically, sometimes careening frantically -- a patchwork quilt stitched from scraps of local airwaves."
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. EVERGREEN EPISODE 092.
Devil's Radio
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:58:31
1
Oct. 27, 2022
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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