KUNSTRADIO - RADIOKUNST

[ Deutsche Version ]

When woman chooses a playful approach to art, it turns into work. To the Japanese-born sound artist Keiko Uenishi, who lives in New York, radio is pure sound. One of these pure sounds became the feedback that Keiko Uenishi, aka o.blaat, used for her radio piece “across.”

A lot of times a childish approach can be important for discovering something for oneself through the so-called process of trial and error. Keiko was invited by the Portuguese electronic label Cronica http://cronicaelectronica.org to produce a two-minute piece on the subject of radio. For her, the laptop is an important tool for creating sound. In the conceptual process, when contemplating the subject of radio, you find that in order to “grasp” it, you often have to take a hands-on approach. And that's what Keiko did, and as it turned out, by taking a portable radio with the volume turned down low or muted, you can turn the tuning dial and you get feedback in the laptop speaker. The image on the screen influences this sound too. Everything transmits, everything radiates. And this is made audible – our senses are broadened through technology and entire universes unfold before us. With simple things, the scientific background often isn't important at all, or it doesn't become important until later: airwave communication between two everyday devices – laptop and transistor radio – in the form of feedback off the FM carrier frequency, well, maybe the scientific principles behind it have been investigated, but they aren't directly essential to the pleasurable sensory experience.

To avoid interrupting communication between the portable office machine, laptop, and the portable radio, Keiko uses a piece of equipment that looks like it comes from the Starship Enterprise: a touchscreen unit called LEMUR: LEMUR multi-sensitive OSC – based touchpad controller: http://jazzmutant.com

Across explores communication over distances and examines one of the original uses of the radio.

Uenishi is also involved in a number of other projects, she is part of the open community SHARE, for example, which, as the name implies, is about sharing and exchanging in the digital age and a kind of alternative economy. Every Sunday a growing number of people get together at different venues in NYC in order to share sounds, bits, and bytes and generate images. Other topics of discussion include open source, copyleft, Linux, etc., which can be attributed to the political inclinations of many of the SHARE-people. Classic hacker mentality? It all began with the notion of providing a space for making music together, after the DJ had moved in and completely taken over all background music. In the wake of the long, protracted DJ debate – the DJ, who was supplanted by MP3 players, etc. – SHARE was born. It places no restrictions on age, origin, or language, but focuses once again on the social process of “making music together.” The only rule is that musicians bring their own gear.

Links:
• Statement by Keiko Uenishi
• http://share.dj
• http://obla.at