More Facts On The PolywaveG.X. Jupitter-Larsen I was just about to do my regular weekly show, when the transmitter broke down. It wasn't going to get fixed that night, but I stuck around any way. I recorded the static that was going over the airwaves during the period that my program would have otherwise been on the air. Next week I played these tapes on my show in their entirety; just in case any one had missed the week before. I got a few calls from listeners as usual. But this time they all had the same thing to tell me. That the static I recorded at the station was different from the static they had heard coming off their radios at home. So on the following week's program I had the station engineer come on and explain, in detail, how a thing like this happens. I find there's an absurdity to rot and decay. And to communicate this I've taken a light-hearted, if not flippant, attitude towards everything I do. Entropy is the underlining theme for all of my constructs, be they on radio or not. Most of my live performances at clubs ~ galleries consist of making a mess. Assisted by my performance troupe ~The Haters~, I've performed by tearing up hundreds of books, by smashing numerous sheets of glass, and by setting large trucks on fire. Once in 1993, I used a giant ion-gun to charge an entire audience to 5000 volts. Audience members chased one another around the club giving each other shocks. As a result of all this, I've developed something of a reputation for wrecking the venues I perform at. Never the less, since 1987 one radio station after another has had me come on to do a live on-air presentation. Most of these on-air performances have consisted of the station broadcasting the sounds of me trashing their studio. This live radio-art can last anywhere from five minutes to four hours; with time set aside for station ID. I've performed mostly on college and community stations like KPFA Berkeley, KZSC Santa Cruz, KFJC Los Altos Hills, and KXLU Los Angeles. Pirate stations in Europe such as Radio Alize Paris, and 104.5 Zurich have also had me do my radiophonic specialty for them. Noise collages made from recordings of such shows were featured in the Festival Internacional De Radio Art on the Radio Nacional De Espa~a in 1989, 1990 and 1991. Entropy was also the underlining theme for the radio plays I've done for the ORF program UKunstradio". With entropy the outcome is invariably some variation on the hole. My 1992 radio play ~Clici-Clic" was composed solely of amplified hole-punching. A contact-mic was mounted on a hand-held hole-punch, and recorded one track at a time on a maximal amount of tracks. The absurdity I find in rot and decay is the fact that biology is based on unstable molecules transferring energy between stable molecules. This very process, that gives life, also simultaneously takes it away. Because the molecules that are doing the energy transferring are unstable, aging occurs. This is irony. And irony is funny. More recent broadcasts of mine have consisted of slowly pushing live microphones into power grinders. Go ahead, laugh. You know you want to.
1) Next Stop, A Hundred And Third Street...
©1995 G.X. Jupitter-Larsen |