The second project I would like to discuss is "Droit de cité" (a play on words in French meaning both "right of quotation" and "right of citizenship"). This project was co-produced with the FM network of Société Radio-Canada (SRC), the Canadian French language national broadcasting service. The project was conceived by SRC producers Claire Bourque and Mario Gauthier.

The project was intended as a form of public radio intervention and exploration of real time musicalization of an urban soundscape. Since we were celebrating the 350th anniversary of the City of Montreal in 1992, we decided to listen to our immediate environment and ask both local and foreign artists to make music with it.

The program note from the festival describes the project as follows: "For seven days, at different times, sound portraits of the city of Montréal were presented live on the FM network of Société Radio-Canada. Seven soundscapes were captured live from different locations in the city and trans-formed by artists situated in a production studio at SRC. These artists transformed the sounds into a musical product which was broadcast live, without warning to the audience, on the national network. As a result, radio became, for a brief moment, a giant ear listening to the personality of the city."

The seven portraits were broadcast from June 15 through June 21, 1992 at different times of the day and night within regular programs of the FM network. Each capsule was meant to portray a different geographical region and atmosphere of the city.

"Traffic", by Mario Gauthier and Claire Bourque, presented a sound portrait of the city and of its traffic networks at the morning rush hour. Gauthier and Bourque used pre-recorded sounds of highways, bridges and roads combined with a real time broadcast of the noisy highway dominated soundscape outside of the SRC building in Montreal. "Montréal suspendue" (Suspended Montreal), by the Québec City sound art group BRUIT TTV, was an improvisation based on the sounds of bridges surrounding the city. A series of microphones were placed on Jacques-Cartier bridge and broadcast to a production studio at the SRC were the musicians transformed the bridge sounds and added sounds from invented instruments and vocal sources. "La grande bouffe" (The Great Meal), by Jean-Pierre Côté, was a portrait both direct and stylised of the gastronomic and social life of the city at noon, with artist Rober Racine and musician Diane Labrosse hosting a lunch table conversation combined with pre-recorded lunch sounds from across the city and the Glass Orchestra (Toronto), performing on invented glass instruments. "Montréal sous la ville" (Montreal Under the City), was my contribution to the project. My portrait was a sound panorama of the subterranean soundscapes of the city using a live set of microphones at a subway station mixed with pre-recorded sounds on tape. "Sortie St-Denis, Montréal la nuit" (St-Denis Outing, Montreal by Night), by sampling artist/composer Bob Ostertag and guitarist/composer René Lussier, was an improvisation on the Friday night sound-scape, with a focus on the state of homeless adolescents. A microphone was placed on this busy "night life" street and was combined with processed, sampled and guitar sounds. "Les ondes fantômes, Montréal inoui" (Phantom Waves, Unheard-of Montreal), by composer Ned Bouhalassa, was a celebration of the summer solstice with a multitude of short-wave radio stations mixed live. Over 20 short wave radios were scanned for over 2 hours and transformed in real time to create a portrait of the electronic soundscape of the city. "Montréal sacré" (Sacred Montreal), by composer Yves Daoust, presented a sensual portrait of Sunday morning in the city, with its calm and quietude and an implicit sacred presence. A microphone was placed in St. Joseph's Oratory where sounds of a mass were combined with pre-recorded sound-scapes from different areas of the city recorded on various Sunday mornings.

"Droit de cité" was an adventure never before attempted on public radio and produced a wide variety of reactions and comments. We assumed that this original project would be well received by the general public and in particular by the state radio authorities who co-produced it. However, surprisingly, the project seemed to disturb certain people, ranging from personnel at Radio-Canada through to the average "classical" listener. In particular, "Droit de cité" seemed to disrupt the regularity and purity of classical listening and thus broke a long-standing tradition of "fine" broadcasting of state radio. There was also widespread acclaim for this form of artistic experimentation with standard broadcast procedures which questions and challenges conventional modes of broadcasting. As suggested by Mario Gauthier, "this ambitious project had a very strong impact, as it modified the established relationship between listener and radio".

The third project I will discuss is the musical intervention work of Montreal-based sound artist and performer Kathy Kennedy. Kennedy leads the Choeur Maha, a 30-voice women's choir in Montreal. She is interested in using transmission technology as a tool for composition in large public spaces, and is interested in issues of access to technology.

Her intervention works usually occur in large public spaces, such as parks and public squares. The performers sing over a soundtrack which is broadcast by either a public or pirate transmitter, to which portable radios (ghetto-blasters) are tuned. Each singer carries a radio that picks up the soundtrack and each is free to move around in the space, using the blaster as his or her personal monitor. This use of radio technology allows for interesting choreographic and spatial design of large spaces by virtue of the performers as moveable electroacoutic installation pieces.

Kennedy also uses radio and performance to create "Guerrilla Performances", in which the choir performs music in typically patriarchal sites, such as the Hydro-Québec building and the Justice hall. In this case, the soundtrack is broadcast by a personal pirate 1 watt stereo transmitter, which provides a much greater level of control and flexibility for timing. The intention is to bring music into spaces of power and privilege as a form of musical civil disobedience. This form of "un-invited" performance as well as the use of pirate transmitters is illegal in Canada, but is generally tolerated, as the intention is to point out the attitude and behaviour of the space's inhabitants. Kennedy is interested in the use of the ghetto-blaster radio intervention as a juxtaposition of the light, seemingly frivolous nature of radio along with its more resolutely subversive nature.

In 1992, the "7e Printemps électroacoutique" premiered "IDLINGO", a work for 30 female voices and tape broadcast on community radio during the day long installation event "Lafontaine Park as a Theatre of Sound" on June 14, 1992. The work is about the individual's need to articulate somehow his or her feelings and reactions in a technologically inundated world. "IDLINGO" combined choreography, music and text in a tightly knit 10 minute performance. At times, the singers moved freely throughout the crowd, each singing a private, individually chosen melody during a live improvisation by one of the choir members back at the radio station. She was, by a pre-determined set of cues, directing them as to where to go, and what to do. They advanced or changed direction based on certain key phrases in her monologue. Kennedy points out that we are often foolishly led to believe that technology can facilitate communication, when in fact, it should never be mistaken for human interaction in real time.

"IDLINGO", also has a tape part, also broadcast by radio. It is comprised mainly of radio distortion and other typically urban sounds (car engines, horns, and so on). These sounds are pitted against the lush, soothing qualities of both live and recorded female voices. A few hints of the vocal aspect are slipped into the soundtrack to give the radio audience a semblance of what is going on at the actual event. The polemic around the natural voice versus technological, synthetically- produced sounds could be read into the acoustical phenomena of the fragile, treble sounds of women's voices carrying further than the bass drones of industry. The opportunity and the ability for these women to go into the crowd was a uniquely empowering experience. They have now performed in both inviting and confrontational stances. Its also an especially intimate position for a singer to be among the audience, and a rare circumstance in choral music. In her collaborations with Choeur Maha, the performers control the sound source, but the public is generally more free than they care to believe. They can approach the singers, move away from them, and are often encouraged to sing along.

In 1994, Kennedy presented a new work based on "IDLINGO", which grew to a fold of 100 women, men, and children who surrounded the grounds of Montreal's Place des Arts, one part to each street that forms the city block. "Never/Always" is the title of this piece that describes the universal feeling of the individual's isolation within the generality of urban society. It was premiered on April 23, 1994 as part of the "Quinzaine de la voix" international festival of new music.

To conclude, I leave you with a quotation from my friend and colleague Dan Lander, of Toronto, who I recorded in 1992 during an interview for the "Revisiting the World Soundscape" radio project. Lander suggested the following simple and insightful thought, which I refer to time and time again:

"I feel that a possible solution to our problem is to slow down and stop producing so much. We could return to a form of orality and talk to each other a little more. To listen, as opposed to always doing".

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