For
Kunstradio’s focus on Canadian radio art in summer 2011, we have
invited the artist Anna Friz to compile an overview of new productions
and projects. This is what she has come up with:
A Sampler of Recent Canadian Radio Art
“It
would be foolish to try to make many definitive statements about
contemporary Canadian radio art, but it is fair to say that most radio
art in Canada happens on independent or improvised airwaves. Public
radio offers few corners for unfettered artistic expression, but a
healthy campus/community radio sector (meaning: independent,
not-for-profit, listener-supported, volunteer programmed radio) allows
for all sorts of shenanigans in the studio, late at night or in the
middle of the day. Independent stations in Montreal, Kingston,
Winnipeg, Vancouver, and other cities are regular participants in Art's
Birthday and the Eternal Network, often partnering with artist-run
centres, and provide fertile ground for experiments by emerging and
established artists alike. Artists have been pulling radio out of the
studio and into more intimate venues as well, using small circuits and
transmitters to occupy the airwaves however temporarily.
Most
of the artists in this program have spent significant time in
independent radio stations making interesting sounds (with the
exception of s*, who has only recently arrived on the planet, but who
was drawn down to Earth during a meteorite shower when it was
mesmerized by the forward scatter of radio signals). Two of the works
were created live on air, while the others are deeply informed by
radiophony as bodily experience, or as metaphor. Electricity is
channelled as transmissions banal and transcendent are sought; bodies
are encountered, voices resound.”
(Anna Friz)
1) “Chaud a cold night in 2011”
by Martine H. Crispo (2011)
Since
1994, CHAUD POUR LE MONT-STONE, a radio program on CKUT FM in Montreal,
has served as a sound laboratory where everything happens live. It is
pure live radio – nothing hidden, anything goes. Host Martine H.
Crispo jams solo or with invited guests, using any and all objects at
hand – analogue machines, digital equipment, homemade circuits,
recorded frequencies and radio
microphones. For listeners who
don’t appreciate her radio art, Martine has a fabulous voice for
reading public announcements.
This piece is a live jam featuring sounds from circuit-bent toys, photodiodes, and Martine H. Crispo’s laptop.
2) “RadioRoam”
by Stephen Kelly und Eleanor King (2007)
“Radio
Roam” is a radio transmission installation work. It uses many
radios installed in the gallery space, each tuned to a different
frequency on the FM dial. The audio signal "jumps" from one radio to
another, creating a surround-sound experience for the gallery visitor.
It is intended that the transmitted audio blend and bleed into other
high power FM stations, to create an ever changing collage of radio
sounds, in real time.
Stephen Kelly created the
“roaming” transmission, building a circuit that would
automatically change the transmitter's broadcast frequency. Using
a motion detector, activity within the gallery space would trigger the
custom circuit to randomly choose a new spot on the dial.
Eleanor
King composed the audio signal that was transmitted. Using only
recorded samples of her voice and noises of the mouth, the track is
programmed with a digital drum machine, creating repetitive and
rhythmic cycles of vocal sounds.
3) “Private Telephone 1981 (Compressed)“
by Andrea-Jane Cornell (2011)
“Cleaning
the inside of an antique secretary dresser that was given to me, I came
across a cassette tape wedged under one of its little drawers. Written
on the label of the cassette in blue fountain pen was: "Private",
"telephone 1981" on side A, and "God!" on side B.
I
initially broadcast the cassette tape during an overnight program on
CKUT FM in Montreal, and mixed in different musical selections. Because
the cassette tape was resting on a magnet when i found it, there are a
lot of glitches, pops and audio cut out.
There
is something distinctly tragic about these conversations which are
comprised of 4 voices recorded on a telephone answering machine. The
first recorded exchanges are between a younger woman and much older man
who calls to inform her that he is "safely in bed" in an unfeeling,
distant and defeated tone. The second set of conversation is between an
older woman and a middle aged "business" man whose conversations allude
to a sexual relationship and a planned rendez-vous gone sour. Awkward
pauses, giggles and sighs populate their exchanges which move towards
the woman talking about being ill and how she told her doctor that her
corpse was going to be "the healthiest corpse in the morgue. "Shortly
after this comment there is the sound of phone hanging up and then the
sound until the end of the cassette tape is just a vacuous static
filled drone.
I
performed ‘Private Telephone 1981’ in the cadre of the
second edition of ‘Das Kleine Field Recording Festival’
using field recordings, a turn table and record with the recording of a
heartbeat, pitchshifter and delay pedals, and then finally recorded the
piece in one take as an improvisation in CKUT's production studio. This
is a condensed version of the original 30-minute recording."
(Andrea-Jane Cornell)
4) “RUN”
by Tomas Phillips and s* (2011)
Crafted
as part of a project exploring hueman rhythms of silence and movement
on planet Earth, RUN layers binaural recordings taken from the running
body of s* with abstracted sound delved from wave manipulation by Tomas
Phillips. A full exploration into rhythmic meditations of the hueman
body will be released in early 2012 on IO SOUND.
5) “The Bodhi Tree”
von Debashis Sinha
“The
Bodhi Tree” is an audio work centered around an exploration of
the Buddha’s struggle to attain enlightenment. It is a recreation
of his experience as he sat beneath the tree, from his re-imagined
thoughts, to the natural world surrounding him as he sat in the forest,
to the sight of his skin and the sound of his blood flowing. The work
is a re-telling of the Buddha’s quest, filtered through the
artist’s own personal experience growing up in/between cultures
as a second generation Canadian artist. In the retelling, Sinha strives
to become a mediator, a diviner who struggles to tune into the ether of
history and myth and share it through his own experience. This process
of re-imagination and abstraction of his heritage into his work is one
of the central themes of Sinha’s creative output.
Credits:
All sound and text: Debashis Sinha
Text read by: Maxime Desmons
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