2. Revolution of Hearing Multiculturalism is a common place, it is a daily routine, a continuous experience. In a situation where I cannot be sure to whom I am addressing, overcultural, superlinginguistic communication plays an important role. To find our way around in the daily practice of the age of transit passengers, we need obvious, understandable signs. This is a democratic language understood by everyone - the language of symbiotic cooperation. Visual communication is the most simple - we orient primarily through our eyes, images are widely understandable. Seeing is more and more a merely cognitive process, the understanding is consciously controlled. Visuality becomes a unilateral communication tool, in accordance with this our environment is visually overloaded - our social, visual and acoustic spaces are filled by the multicultural horror vacui. Everyone wanting to communicate with images against the spoken word. If we want to build a bridge between ourselves and the 'other' - signs, symbols, logos, pictograms crowd our visual space. The spoken word remains the global English: love, stop, go, feeling, new, etc. - the 500 most important words to the inhabitants of the planet. Deriving from its efficiency the image is no longer a mere spectacle, but a surface, an interface; we need to get into an interactive relationship if we would like to conquer the domain of the unknown. That's why it had a revolutionary significance when Ivan Sutherland presented the Sketchpad software in 1962, the sensation of direct freehand drawn lines on the computer display: a gesture-input, associative of the visual communication. The relationship with the machine has become anthropomorphised, on the basis of physical experiences all the operations are easily executable. It seems that with our other hi-tech perception device, just the opposite occurs: there is no communication business of that scale built on hearing. Only speaking takes seriously advantage of our ear. Hearing is linear, bound to the course of time, like we are bound to the irreversible direction of time. Medial design sees in listening the quickest way to the subconscious. It's like a direct channel to subliminal manipulation. Because of this our auditive space is continuously filled by prescribed sound - consciously joined to our actual mental state, spatial noise information and an incredible amount of engineered music/signals. Thanks to improving recording techniques the music has a background function. We do not pay special attention (conscious listening), because everything is concealed, (canned, conserved). Since the appearance of sound in motion picture films, we are living in a continuos musical background. We have learned how to regulate our musical taste and perception to our fate (live-recorded ratio). The case of concentrated listening is rather rare, listening requires real-personal time in a society always on the move - the spectacle is lost when the music is already recorded. When we are really (consciously) using this high level perception device it is exceptional, solemn, quasi ceremonial (live concerts, rave parties, etc.). Otherwise the sound is only background, muzak making the work easier on the assembly line. The radio is one of the eldest 'new media', it remains on a large and clumsy infrastructure, having been relegated to a secondary role after the advent of newer 'new media' (sound plus visual, like TV). Maximum as supporting phenomenon of multimedia, in which sound acts as illustration material, disburdening the eye. The centers of power realized its significance rather early and are interested to keep it a unilateral, one-way form of communication, creating a precedent for later developments in technology. Radio is the only medium where our fantasy is inspired through our ears, with a gesture-input twisting of the knob we can navigate the cyber-ocean of various audio broadcasts. So we can hear the invisible.

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3. goals Multi minus one medium. Using the ear, vacation of eye. to enhance the activity of listening, to have the same consciousness toward the audio - acoustic environment, as to the visual; to activate the passive perception of hearing, a postgraduate education of the ear, revival of darkness, thinking aloud, with closed eyes building up dialog - bridge - between the institutional, traditional suppliers and the non institutional, non conventional users of the radio medium, pirate stations, web radio, helping the transition toward the new technological versions of the radio medium focus on acoustic activity in the practice, (let artists onto the air, acoustic performances) and in the realm of media theory have the spoken language as the most basic territory

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4. ideas collecting visual elements, (real bridges, rivers, architecture, drawings, photos etc.) and textual references, sound documents in order to create database published on the net; constructing a small wooden bridge, where in every hour one could hear the 12 o clock news broadcast, always from a different time zone; publish informations how to be an independent audio provider, technical infos, (how to build a pirate stations), examples, transcriptions;

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5. Form I imagine a radio play, one homogeneous 24 hour live radio program- one complete day of live broadcast, with one central station, center, mixing office. Speakers, hosts changing throughout the day. The radio program should be directed (organized) by a story, a drama, a narrative tale - a global narrative which can be a very simple (mythical) story. The allotment of time to the broadcasters would be in relation to content, not on an equal, egalitarian distribution. It should be a one day continuous global radio play for a global public, put together of local public events, by local suppliers: live voice, acoustic or theater performances, etc. - ideally this should span to outside of the actual world broadcast. The public could follow it either by listening to the radio -- it should have as many as possible broadcasting stations as it can (it should be accessible everywhere) -- or attending the local events. It should be a multi-tongue (not multilingual ) situation among native and not native speakers, bad and less bad translators. Since Rilke and Heisenberg it's obvious that even the observer is observed. In other words, there is no original, or everyone belongs to a minority. The theme is rivers and bridges and the idea of translation could be represented by various local moderators, particular professionals and non-professionals, who are commenting, translating the events, chatting with each other, and participating in this global live program.

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6. Call for images, texts, documents concerning rivers and bridges for proposals for the narrative structure global radio play for proposals for local live acoustic events, for bridges and rivers related acoustic materials János Sugár (edited by Noel Villers)

[Statement Jan,'96]